UNIVERSITY 


<?r£'&~L^-^tJL^ 


HORACE  MANN, 


THE  EDUCATOR. 


By  ALBERT  E.  W1NSH1P. 

^^SE^UBS^v^ 
UNIVERSITY 


THIRD  EDITION. 


BOSTON . 

JSEW  ENGLAND  PUBLISHING  Co 
1896. 


Copyrighted  189C. 

NEW  ENGLAND  PUBLISHING  CO., 
BOSTON,  MASS. 


Go  1benn>  Barnarb, 

THE 

MOST      DISTINGUISHED      EDUCATIONAL     CONTEMPORARY 
OF 

HORACJS    -(MANN, 

AND    THE 

MOST    EMINENT    LIVING    EDUCATOR,    THIS     TRIBUTE     TO 

MR.     MANN      IS      AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED    BY    THE 

AUTHOR. 


PREFACE. 

.(ireat  men  are  rare.    Mute,  inglorious  Miltons  may  be 

numerous,  but  greatness,  as  the  world  views  it,  must  be 

judged  from  the   way   in  which  emergencies  are  met. 

J.  Horace  Mann  was  a  great  educator  because  he  met  a 

great  educational  emergency.  - 

With  some  characters  greatness  is  linked  to  a  single 
event.  Columbus  discovered  America,  Wellington  de- 
feated Napoleon  at  Waterloo,  Perry  wrote,  "  We  met  the 
enemy  and  they  are  ours."  With  others  it  is  an  inher- 
ited reputation  of  which  few  have  any  definite  estimate 
as  to  the  merit  of  the  popular  verdict.  Walpole  and 
I*itt  in  England,  John  Hancock  and  Charles  Sumner  in 
America  are  securely  anchored  in  the  public  mind  though 
few  can  give  a  reason  for  the  admiration  that  is  in  them. 
Horace  Mann's  reputation  is  largely  of  the  latter  class. 
His  name  is  a  household  word  among  teachers  and  yet 
few  can  tell  aught  of  the  man  or  of  his  work. 

The  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  his  birth  (May  4, 
1896)  should  make  this  entire  year  a  memorial  season  so 
far  as  to  give  every  teacher  and  every  school  acquaint- 
ance with  the  essential  features  of  his  character  and  with 
the  leading  characteristics  of  his  work. 

There  is  one  great  monument  to  this  leader  in  the 
•  "  Life  and  Works  of  Horace  Mann,"  in  five  vojumes 
edited  by  his  widow  and  published  by  Lee  &  Shepard. 
Boston.  Without  these  volumes  comparatively  little 
could  now  be  written  of  his  life.  His  correspondence 
was  voluminous  and  confidential,  giving  details  regard- 
ing his  contests  and  he  was  one  of  the  few  men  fortunate 
enough  to  keep  a  good  diary.  The  correspondence  and 
the  diary  were  both  available  when  Mrs.  Mann  -wrote 
this  "  Life,"  and  for  the  service  here  rendered  the  edu- 
cational public  owes  her  a  debt  of  gratitude.'  These  vol- 
umes also  contain  his  reports  and  addresses.  Unfortu- 
nately many  who  would  gladly  know  of  Horace  Mann 
cannot  afford  to  buy  the  five  volumes,  and  many  will  re- 


ii  PREFACE. 

gret  that  they  do  not  contain  the  great  controversy  with 
the  u  Thirty-one  Boston  Masters."  An  inexpensive 
book  upon  "  Horace  Mann,  the  Educator  "  should  cer- 
tainly be  available. 

The  author  would  acknowledge  his  indebtedness  to 
the  u  Life  and  Works  "  by  Mrs.  Mann.  No  apology 
is  made  for  the  absence  of  reference  footnotes — since  no 
claim  is  entered  to  skill  in  u  the  laboratory  method  in  his- 
tory," nor  for  the  absence  of  a  literary  or  historical  style 
which  requires  the  pruning  and  polishing  of  sentences; 
Dorforthe  unusual  freedom  in  the  expression  of  opinion. 
The  facts  are  closely  verified,  the  winnowing  has  been 
done  with  some  care,  whatever  bears  no  relation  to  his 
educational  service  being  eliminated.  Beyond  that  the 
thought  has  been  to  give  the  author's  view  of  the  man, 
his  work  and  his  times  in  a  condensed  and  readable 
form,  with  convictions  rather  than  pretensions.. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

— .  I  — A  Great  Educator 1 

II — At  Home  and  at  School        .....       4 

III  —  Law  and  Legislature     ....  .9 

IV  —  Educational  Champion          .         .         .         ...     14 

V  —  As  He  Found  It 21 . 

—.VI— The  Normal  Schools 28 

VII  — Opposition     ..'......     37 

VIII  — Mr.  Mann's  Reports 41 

IX  —  The  Famous  Seventh  Report        .         .        .         =50 

X  —  "  Remarks  "  of  the  Masters         .        .         ,         .55 

XI— "Reply"  to  "Remarks'.'      .       -.         .         .         .62 

XII -"Rejoinder  "to  the  "Reply"      .  .     68 

XIII  —  The  "  Answer  "  and  the  Crisis     .  .     72 

XIV  —  The  Statesman       ....  .     77 
„  XV—  'At  Antioch  College        ......     79 

XVI  —  A-B-C  in  the  Controversy  .     82 


• 


CHAPTER    I. 

A    GREAT    EDUCATOR. 
.**., 

By  universal  consent  Horace  Mann  is  the  edu-  ' 
cator  of  the  century.     His  is  the  name  to  conjure 
with  in  the  forests  of  Michigan  or  the  everglades 
of  Florida,  in  the  council  of  London  or  with  the 
ministry  of  Prussia.     People  in  school  and  out 
know  that  Washington  is  the  father  of  his  coun- 
try, Lincoln  the  savior  of  the  Union,  Franklin  the 
revealer  of  electricity,  Webster  the  orator,  and 
'^Horace  Mann  the  educator.     But,  alas,  they  do 
not  know  much  about  this  educator  or  his  work. 
The  most  prominent  statue  in  Boston,  placed  byK 
the  Comin  on  wealth  in  front  of  the  state  house  is/ 
•an  imposing  bronze  figure  of  Horace  Mann./   HisH 
Itwelve  reports  to  the  State  Board  of  Education  are 
|the  rarest  and  most  valuable  educational  works 
\m  our  language. 

Hon.  Anson  P.  Burlingame  was  a  visitor  at  a 
session  of  the  London  city  council  when  an  edu- 
cational appropriation  was  voted  down  by  a  de- 
cided majority.  Then  a  member  arose  and  read 
extracts  from  one  of  the  reports  of  Horace  Mann 
whereupon  the  city  council  of  London  reconsid- 
ered its  action  and  made  the  appropriation. 
Such  was  the  influence  of  Horace  Mann  in  foreign 
parts. 

After  his  retirement  from  office,  business  men 
of  Boston  presented  him  with  a  purse  of  two  thou- 
sand dollars  as  a  slight  token  of  their  appreciation 
of  the  service  he  had  rendered  the  cause  of  educa- 
tion. 

Why  should  one  man,  in  no  adequate  sense  a 


2  HORACE    MANN, 

teacher  or  a  philosopher,  no  single  sentence  of 
whose  writings  lives  as  the  keynote  to  his  service 
or  wisdom,  be  singled  out  to  carry  the  honor  and 
exert  the  educational  influence  of  the  century 
in  American  life?  It  is  easier  to  ask  this  question 
than  to  answer  it.  No  one  has  yet  analyzed  that 
strain  in  human  nature  by  which  Washington 
carries  in  his  name  the  honor  and  glory  of  the  he- 
roic generals,  statesmen  and  patriots  of  the  Rev- 
olution, or  Grant  the  generalship  of  the  Civil  War 
or  John  Brown  the  abolition  enthusiasm  of  his 
time.  There  are  always  many  men  who  con- 
tribute to  the  success  of  any  great  cause,  and 
some  one  among  them  receives  the  honor  won  by 
all.  In  that  great  educational  contest  out  of 
which  the  normal  schools  were  born  and  the 
common  school  system  of  Massachusetts  .devel- 
oped, Cyrus  Pierce  was  the  great  teacher,  Ed- 
mund Dwight  the  organizer  of  the  State  Board 
of  Education,  and  the  founder  of  the  normal 
schools  through  his  gift  of  $10,000,  but  the  devo- 
tion of  Charles  Simmer,  Theodore  Parker,  and 
Samuel  J.  May,  the  benefactions  of  Edmund. 
Dwight  and  Josiah  Quincy,  and  the  administra- 
tive wisdom  of  Barnas  Sears  and  George  S.  Bout- 
well  are  all  merged  in  the  name  of  Horace  Mann. 
This  could  not  be  changed  if  we  would.  WTho 
would  change  it  if  he  could? 

There  must  be  some  reason  for  this  trait  in 
human  nature.  There  must  have  been  some- 
thing in  the  personality  or  experience  of  Mr.  Mann 
to  give  him  such  distinction.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  no  teacher  could  have  won  such  laurels,  nor 
could  he  have  earned  his  permanent  distinction 
merely  as  secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education. 
While  he  did  not  owe  his  reputation  to  his  elo- 
quence, literary  brilliancy,  professional  training, 
statesmanship,  religious  conviction,  temperance 
zeal,  abolition  enthusiasm,  or  personal  friend- 


THE    EDUCATOR.  3 

ships,  he  could  not  have  been  what  he  was  with 
any  of  these  factors  omitted. 

\It  is  customary  for  the  uninformed  to  attribute 
r.  Mann's  eminence  to  the  fact  that  he  sacrificed? 
^j  brilliant  professional  and  politicaL  prospects  toj 
I  devote  himself  to  the  cause  of  education,  and  tq 
consider  this  honor  the  due  reward  of  such! 
sacrifice.  This  is  only  partly  true.  He  was  a 
Boston  lawyer  and  president  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Senate  when  he  accepted  the  secretaryship 
of  the  Board  of  Education  at  a  salary  of  $1,500  a 
year;  but  there  was  no  prospect  .of  immediate 
political  advancement  for  him,  and  for  the  last 
three  years  of  his  practice  he  had  slept  in  his  little 
laV  oflice,  and  more  than  one-half  the  days  found 
him  without  sufficient  money  to  buy  even  a 
meagre  luncheon.  This  last  fact  was  due  partly 
to  his  light  income,  but  more  to  the  heavy  in- 
debted-ness incurred  by  indorsing  for  a  brother, 
whose  financial  failure  placed  heavy  burdens 
upon  him.  Again,  he  had  every  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  the  salary  would  be  f  2,500  the  first  year 
and  rise  to  $3,000.  There  were  greater  sacrifices 
than  he  anticipated.  The  opportunity  developed 
elements  of  character,  brilliant  talents  of  voice 
and  pen,  intensified  the  friendships  of  such  men 
as  Josiah  Quincy,  Charles  Sumner,  Henry  Wilson,  N 
Edward  Everett,  and  Theodore  Parker,  and  ulti- 
mately won  for  him  such  personal  and  political 
popularity  as  to  give  him  the  seat  in  Congress  ; 
when  John  Quincy  Adams  fell  in  his  place  in  the 
National  House  of  Representatives,  and  enabled 
him  to  secure  reelection  against  the  most  tyranni- 
cal dictation  of  Daniel  Webster  and  the  entire 
political  management  at  his  command. 

If  I  may  be  allowed  to  put  in  a  single  phras 
my  .estimate  of  the  characteristics  that  made  Mr 
Mann  an  educational  leader  I  would  say  it  wa 
his  power  to  make  and  command  a  crisis. 


CHAPTER    II. 

AT     HOME     AND     AT     SCHOOL. 

On  March  2,  1778,  an  exceptionally  intelligent 
village  in  Southern^  Massachusetts  was  incorpo- 
rated as  a  town  and  was  named  after  that 
great  genius  and  statesman,  Benjamin  Franklin. 
Some  enterprising  riti/en  sent  word  to  Mr.  Frank- 
lin that  it  would  give  great  satisfaction  to  the  peo- 
ple if  he  would  present  to  the  town  a  bell  for  the 
church,  in  appreciation  of  the  honor.  Mr.  Franklin 
said  that  he  hoped  a  people  who  would  name  a  town 
for  him  would  have  more  regard  for  ''sense  than 
sound"  and  he  preferred  to  give  them  a  public 
library  of  five  hundred  volumes.  E^gktejen  years 
later,  May  4,  171X5,  Horace  .Mann  was  born  in  a 
humble  farmhouse,  and  that  library  of  Franklin's 
was  the  chief  factor  in  giving  the  world  the 
studious,  scholarly,  devoted,  aggressive  educa- 
tional leader  of  America. 

Until  nearly  twenty  years  of  age  he  never  went 
|to  school  more  than  a  few  weeks  in  midwinter, 
ind  then  to  instructors  who  were  "very  good  peo- 
>le  but  very  poor  teachers."  The  town  did  not 
then  furnish  "free  text  books"  and  the  lad 
worked  many  a  half-day  braiding  straw  for  hats 
to  get  the  money  to  buy  spelling-book,  arithmetic 
and  reader.  His  father  died  when  he  was  but 
thirteen  and  the  boy  worked  thereafter  for  the 
support  of  the  family. 

\Yhen  nearly  twenty  he  came  to  know  an  inspir- 
ing classical  teacher  who  convinced  him  that  a 
college  course  was  possible,  and  within  six 
months  from  the  time  he  first  saw  a  Lgtin  gram- 


TEE    EDUCATOR.  5 

mar  he  was  admitted  to  the  sophomore  class  of 
Brown  University.  It  was  such  a  six  months  of 
study  as  has  rarely  been  known  in  America,  and 
it  broke  his  health  for  life.  Nor  was  this  the  only 
evidence  of  the  scholastic  strength  and  brilliancy 
of  Horace  Mann.  Although  he  entered  the  class 
with  no  adequate  preparation  and  no  literary 
culture,  with  all  the  traditional  prejudices 
against  the  "short  cut"  students  and  those  uncul- 
tured, he  soon  led  his  class  and  graduated  far  in 
advance  of  any  other  student.  Upon  graduating 
at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  remained  at  Brown 
as  an  instructor  in  Greek  and  Latin  for  three 
years.  During  his  college  years  he  taught  coun- 
try schools  a  few  weeks  each  winter. 

Through  life,  Horace  Mann  was  inclined  to 
refer  to  the  trials  and  -denials  of  his  boyhood,  to 
the  poor  teaching  and  lack  of  opportunities  as 
great  misfortunes,  causing  irreparable  loss;_but_it 
is  an  open  question  whether  he  did  not  owe  more 
to  the  first  twenty  years  of  his  life  in  which  there 
was  developed  hunger  for  knowledge,  craving  for 
opportunity  which  necessitated  his  reading  his- 
tories and  other  works  adapted  to  .men  rather 
than  children,  listening  to  such  mighty  sermons 
as  only/an  Emnions  of  that  day  could  preach, — 
thinking  upon  and  rebelling  against  them  all  the 
week, — than  he  could  have  owed  to  any  method 
of  instruction  that  would  have  monopolized  his 
thought  or,  rather,  have  diverted  his  mind  to 
books  or  even  to  nature  through  these  years. 

From  the  day  he  entered  college,  he  never  had 
an  hour  for  his  mind  to  lie  fallow.  Speaking  of 
these  years  he  said, — "Yet  with  these  ^obstruc- 
tions, I  had  a  love  of  knowledge  which  nothing 
could  repress.  An  inward  voice  raised  its  plaint 
forever  in  my  heart  for  something  nobler  and 
better;  and  if  my  parents  had  not  the  means  to 
give  me  knowledge,  they  intensified  the  love  of  it. 


6  HORACE    MANN, 

They  always  spoke  of  learning  and  learned  men 
with  enthusiasm  and  a  kind  of  reverence.  I  was 
taught  to  take  care  of  the  few  books  we  had,  as 
th6ugh  there  was  something  sacred  about  them. 
I  never  dog-eared  one  in  my  life,  nor  profanely 
scribbled  upon  title-pages,  margin,  or  fly-leaf;  and 
would  as  soon  have  stuck  a  pin  through  my  flesh 
as  through  the  pages  of  a  book." 

All  this  denial  and  his  life  with  his  mother  pro- 
duced a  character  of  which  any  man  might  well 
be  proud.  "I  have  always  been  exempt  from 
what  may  be  called  common  vices.  I  was  never 
intoxicated  in  my  life;  unless,  perchance,  with  joy 
or  anger.  I  never  swore;  indeed,  profanity  was 
always  most  disgusting  and  repulsive  to  me.  And 
(I  consider  it  almost  a  climax)  I  never  used  the 
'vile  weed'  in  any  form.  I  early  formed  the  reso- 
lution to  be  a  slave  to  no  habit."  Speaking  in 
later  life  of  his  youthful  longing  for  more  educa- 
tion, he  said, — "I  know  not  how  it  was;  its  motive 
never  took  the  form  of  wealth  or  fame.  It  was 
rather  an  instinct  which  impelled  towards  knowl- 
edge, as  that  of  migratory  birds  impels  them 
northward  in  springtime.  All  my  boyish  castles 
in  the  air  had  reference  to  doing  something  for 
the  benefit  of  mankind.  The  early  precepts  of 
benevolence,  inculcated  upon  me  by  my  parents, 
flowed  out  in  this  direction;  and  I  had  a  convic- 
tion that  knowledge  was  my  needed  instrument." 

Referring  to  his  financial  limitations  in  college, 
he  wrote  his  sister  at  the  time, — "If  the  children 
of  Israel  were  pressed  for  'gear'  half  so  hard  as 
I  have  been,  I  do  not  wonder  they  were  willing  to 
worship  a  golden  calf.  It  is  a  long  time  since  my 
last  ninepence  bade  good-by  to  its  brethren ;  and 
I  suspect  the  last  two  parted  on  no  very  friendly 
terms,  for  they  have  nover  since  met  together. 
Poor  wretches!  never  did  two  souls  stand  in 
greater  need  of  mutual  support  and  consolation." 


THE    EDUCATOR.  7 

No  study  of  the  life  of  Horace  Mann  would  be 
complete  that  left  out  his  tribute  to  his  mother, 
for  whom  he  worked  and  with  whom  he  lived  so 
incessantly  after  the  death  of  his  father.  "Prin- 
ciple, duty,  gratitude,  affection,  have  bound  me 
so  closely  to  that  parent  whom  alone  Heaven 
has  spared  me,  that  she  seems  to  me  rather  a  por- 
tion1 of  my  own  existence  than  a  separate  and 
independent  being.  I  can  conceive  no  emotions 
more  pure,  more. holy,  more  like  those  which  glow 
in  the  bosom  of  a  perfected  being,  than  those 
which  a  virtuous  son  must  feel  towards  an  affec- 
tionate mother.  She  has  little  means  of  render- 
ing him  assistance  in  his  projects  of  aggrandize- 
ment, or. in  the  walks  of  ambition;  so  that  his 
feelings  are  uncontaminated  with  any  of  those 
earth-born  passions  that  sometimes  mingle  their 
alloy  with  his  other  attachments.  How  different 
is  the  regard  whk'h  springs  from  benefits  which 
we  hope  hereafter  to  enjoy,  from  that  which  arises 
from  services  rendered  and  kindnesses  bestowed 
even  before  we  were  capable  of  knowing  their 
value!  It  is  this  higher  sentiment  that  a  mother 
challenges  in  a  son.  For  myself,  I  can  truly  say 
that  the  strongest  and  most  abiding  incentive 
to  excellence  by  which  I  was  ever  animated, 
sprang  from  that  look  of  solicitude  and  hope,  that 
heavenly  expression  of  maternal  tenderness, 
when,  without  the  utterance  of  a  single  word,  my 
mother  has  looked  into  my  face,  and  silently  told 
me  that  my  life  was  freighted  with  a  two-fold 
being,  for  it  bore  her  destiny  as  well  as  my  own. 
And  as  truly  can  I  say  that  the  most  exquisite 
delight  that  ever  thrilled  me  was,  when  some 
flattering  rumor  of  myself  had  found  its  way  to 
her  ear,  to  mark  her  readier  smile,  her  lighter 
step,  her  disproportionate  encomiums  on  things 
of  trivial  value,  when  I  was  secretly  conscious 
that  her  altered  mien  was  caused  by  the  fountains 


8  HORACE     J/.LA.V, 

of  pleasure  that  were  pouring  their  sweet  waters 
over  her  heart." 

Mr.  Mann's  theme  for  his  valedictory  at  gradua- 
tion was  "The  Progressive  Character  of  the  Hu- 
man Race."  This  was  really  the  one  theme  upon 
which  he  wrote  and  thought  and  talked  through 
life.  At  the  age  of  twenty-  live,  he  entered  the  law 
school  at  Litchfield,  Conn.  One  of  his  mates  at 
the  law  school  has  described  him  as  a  young  man 
with  massive  brow,  high  an-hing  head,  and  mild 
bright  eye.  He  ranked  as  the 


and  the  heat  Inwyor  in  the  institution.  His  train- 
ing for  his  profession  fitted  him  for  a  life  of  mis- 
cellaneous usefulness  and  occasional  brilliancy 
rather  than  for  that  of  a  plodding  lawyer,  for 
devotion  to  humanity  rather  than  to  professional 
aspiration. 

Ten  years  of  legislative  life  must  demoralize 
the  professional  practice  of  any  thoroughly  con- 
scientious and  honorable  man.  Legislative  ex- 
perience to  be  of  professional  advantage  must 
be  associated  with  the  business  side  of  the  legis- 
lation rather  than  the  philanthropic.  Mr.  Mann's 
legislative  tastes,  convictions  and  associations 
were  better  adapted  to  make  him  useful  to  hu- 
manity than  financially  successful  as  a  lawyer. 


CHAPTER    ffl. 

LAW     AND     LEGISLATURE. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  Mr.  Mann  was  ad 
mitted  to  the  bar  and  began  practice  in  Dedham. 
While  never  a  great  success  financially,  the  court 
records  show  that  he  won  four  out  of  five  of  the 
cases  that  he  tried.  It  was  a  financial  misfor- 
tune that  he  would  never  try  a  case  in  which  he 
did  not  believe  that  he  was  in  the  right.  He 
fully  appreciated  that  a  man  will  pay  a  much 
larger  sum  to  have  a  wrong  cause  advocated  than 
a  right,  and  that  it  lessens  the  popularity  of  an 
attorney  to  be  thought  good  rather  than  smart, 
to  care  more  for  being  right  than  for  winning. 
In  the  fourteen  years,  he  seems  never  to  have  had 
a  case  that  brought  him  large  returns  or  high 
honors,  but  his  record  for  winning  his  cases  has 
few  parallels.  He  held  that  an  advocate  loses 
his  highest  power  when  he  loses  the  ever-con- 
scious conviction  that  he  is  contending  for  the 
truth;  that  though  the  fees  or  fame  may  be  a 
stimulus,  yet  that  a  conviction  of  being  right  is 
itself  creative  of  power,  and  renders  its  possessor 
more  than  a  match  for  antagonists  otherwise 
greatly  his  superiors.  He  used  to  say  that  in  his 
conscious  conviction  of  right  there  was  a  magnet- 
ism ;  and  he  only  wanted  an  opportunity  to  be  put 
in  communication  with  a  jury  in  order  to  impreg- 
nate them  with  his  own  belief.  Beyond  this,  his 
aim  always  was,  before  leaving  any  head  or  topic 
in  his  argument,  to  condense  its  whole  force  into  a 
vivid  epigrammatic  point,  which  the  jury  could 
not  help  remembering  when  they  got  into  the 


10  innt\L'E    i/.iA.v. 

jury-room;  and,  by  graphic  illustration  and  simile, 
to  fasten  pictures  upon  their  minds,  which  they 
would  retain  and  reproduce  after  abstruse  argu- 
ments were  forgotten.  He  endeavored  to  give  to 
each  one  of  the  jurors  something  to  be  "quoted" 
on  his  side,  when  they  retired  for  consultation. 
He  argued  his  cases  as  though  he  was  in  the  jury- 
room  itself,  taking  part  in  the  deliberations  that 
were  to  be  held  there.  From  the  confidence  in  his 
honesty,  and  those  pictures  with  which  he  filled 
the  air  of  the  jury-room,  came  his  uncommon  suc- 
cess. ^Ehe  fourth  year  in  Dedham  he  was  elected 
to  the  Legislature,  and  his  first  speech  was  one  of 
those  masterly  efforts  which  establish  a  repu- 
tation that  endures. 

Mosf  of  the  misfortune  that  came  to  Mr.  Mann 
in  public  life  was  associated  directly  or  indirectly 
with  his  religious  views.  The  mighty  preaching 
of  Doctor  Emmons  turned  him,  as  a  youth,  against 
the  evangelical  faith,  and  inspired  a  purpose  to 
champion  liberality  of  thought  on  every  occas- 
L^sion. 

His  first  legislative  honors  were  won,  in  1827, 
in  his  great  speech  in  defence  of  religious  liberty 
in  opposition  to  a  scheme  by  which  close  corpora- 
tions could  secure  the  income  of  certain  property 
forever  to  the  support  of  particular  creeds.  From 
that  hour  he  was  again  and  again  bitterly  antag- 
onized by  the  evangelical  press  and  leaders,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  was  unable  to  retain  the  un- 
wavering support  of  those  whom  he  championed. 

His  last  days  were  saddened  beyond  descrip- 
tion by  a  cruel  sentence  written  by  Theodore 
Parker,  one  of  his  best  friends,  in  which  he  ex- 
pressed regret  at  Mr.  Mann's  religious  attitude 
at  Antioch  College,  saying  that  he  regretted  that 
Mr.  Mann  had  forgotten  that  in  religion  as  in 
mathematics  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  dis- 
tance between  two  points. 


THE    EDUCATOR.  11 

The  town  of  Dedham  did  him  the  honor  to  send 
him  to  the  Legislature  for  six  successive  years, 
as  long  indeed  as  he  lived  in  that  town.  At  the 
age  of  thirty-seven  (1833)  he  moved  to -Boston,  and 
the  same  year  that  senatorial  district  honored 
him,  as  few  have  been  honored  in  political  life,  by 
seeding  him  immediately  to  the  State  Senate, 
where  he  remained  four  years,  the  last  two  years 
as  presidenfof  that  body. 

During  his  legislative  life  he  gave  much  atten- 
tion to  philanthropic  matters,  especially  to  those 
connected  with  the  care  of  the  defective  classes. 
To  him  was  largely  due  the  estabTisIfment  of  the 
Worcester  Lunatic  Asylum.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  ardent  champions  in  the  cause  of  the  deaf 
and  dumb.  While  engaged  in  efforts  to  amelio- 
rate the  condition  of  the  unfortunate  classes  he 
became  convinced  that  the  greatest  need  in  Amer- 
ica was  the  better  education  of  all  children  and 
youth;  and  he  became  the  legislative  champion 
of  the  plans  of  Edmund  Dwight,  James  G.  Carter 
and  Robert  Rantoul,  Jr.,  for  the  establishment  of 
a  Board  of  Education. 

During  his  college  course  he  became  much  at- 
tached to  the  young  daughter  of  Doctor  Messer 
in  whose  family  he  lived,  and  ten  years  later, 
while  he  was  practising  law  in  Dedham,  she 
became  his  wife.  Speaking  of  her  an  intimate 
friend  said,  "When  I  knew  his  wife  personally 
(I  had  long  known  her  through  him)  I  was  indeed 
rejoiced  that  such  an  angelic  being  had  been 
created  to  be  his  comfort,  solace,  joy  and  happi- 
ness. She  was  extremely  delicate  in  health,  and 
called  forth  the  tenderest  care.  This  fostering, 
protecting,  caressing  care,  she  had,  of  course,  in 
perfection." 

Their  life  together  was  brief,  and  when  she 
died,  it  seemed  as  though  there  was  for  him  no 
consolation.  He  describes  his  emotions  as  no 


H>  n  GRACE     M.\\\, 

one  else  could  do:  "Amid  the  current  of  con  versa 
tion,  in  social  intercourse  or  the  avocations  of 
business,  in  the  daily  walk  of  life,  it  is  never  but 
half  forgotten;  and  the  sight  of  an  object,  the 
utterance  of  a  word,  the  tone  of  a  voice,  re-opens 
upon  me  the  mournful  scene,  and  spreads  around 
me  with  electric  quickness,  a  world  of  gloom. 
During  that  period,  when,  for  me,  there  was  a 
light  upon  earth  brighter  than  any  light  bf  the 
sun,  and  a  voice  sweeter  than  any  of  Nature's 
harmonies,  I  did  not  think  but  that  the  happiness 
which  was  boundless  in  present  enjoyment  would 
be  perpetual  in  duration.  Do  not  blame  my 
ungrateful  heart  for  not  looking  beyond  the  boon 
with  which  Heaven  had  blessed  me ;  for  you  know 
not  the  potency  of  that  enchantment.  My  life 
went  out  of  myself.  One  after  another,  tha  feel- 
ings which  had  before  been  fastened  upon  other 
objects  loosened  their  strong  grasp,  and  went  to 
dwell  in  the  sanctuary  of  her  holy  and  beautiful 
nature.  Ambition  forgot  the  applause  of  the 
world  for  the  more  precious  gratulations  of  that 
approving  voice.  Joy  ceased  its  quests  abroad; 
for  at  home  there  was  an  exhaustless  fountain 
to  slake  its  renewing  thirst.  There  imagination 
built  her  palaces,  and  garnered  her  choicest  treas- 
ures. She  too  supplied  me  with  new  strength  for 
toil  and  new  motives  for  excellence.  Within  her 
influence,  there  could  be  no  contest  for  sordid 
passions  or  degrading  appetites;  for  she  sent  a 
divine  and  overmastering  strength  into  every 
generous  sentiment,  which  I  cannot  describe. 
She  purified  my  conceptions  of  purity,  and  beauti- 
fied the  ideal  of  every  excellence.  I  never  knew 
her  to  express  a  selfish  or  an  envious  thought; 
nor  do  I  believe  that  the  type  of  one  was  ever 
admitted  to  disturb  the  peacef  ulness  of  her  bosom. 
Yet,  in  the  passionate  love  she  inspired,  there -was 
nothing  of  oblivion  of  the  rest  of  mankind.  Her 


TEE    EDUCATOR.  ,13 

teachings  did  not  make  one  love  others  less,  but 
differently,  more  aboundingly.  Her  sympathy 
with  other's  pain  seemed  to  be  quicker  and 
stronger  than  the  sensation  of  her  own;  and  with 
a  sensibility  that  would  sigh  at  a  crushed  flower, 
there  was  a  spirit  of  endurance  that  would  up- 
hold a  martyr.  There  was  in  her  breast  no  scorn 
of  vice,  but  a  wonder  and  amazement  that  it  could 
exist.  To  her  it  seemed  almost  a  mystery;  and 
though  she  comprehended  its  deformity,  it*  was 
more  in  pity  than  in  indignation  that  she  regarded 
it:  but  that  hallowed  joy  with  which  she  contem- 
plated whatever  tended  to  ameliorate  the  condi- 
tion of  mankind,  to  save  them  from  pain  or  rescue 
them  from  guilt,  was,  in  its  manifestations,  more 
like  a  vision  from  a  brighter  world,  a  divine  illu- 
mination, than  like  the  earthly  sentiment  of  hu- 
manity." It  was  this  affliction  and  the  sadness 
with  which  it  shrouded  his  life  that  led  his  friends 
to  insist  that  he  leave  Dedham  and  take  up  life 
anew  in  Boston.  There  are  few  more  heartrending 
scenes  in  life  than  the  picture  of  this  man  leaving 
such  a  home  and  living  in  practical  poverty,  sleep- 
ing in  his  law  office,  the  only  person  in  the  build- 
ing, and,  as  he  said,  going  without  luncheon  half 
the  time  because  he  could  not  afford  the  indul- 
gence. There  is  very  little  satisfaction  in  the 
thought  that  one  of  the  causes  of  this  denial  was 
the  misfortune  of  a  brother  for  whose  debts  he 
had  become  responsible.  All  these  conditions 
made  it  easy  for  him  to  be  tempted  from  law  to 
semi-official  life  as  secretary  of  the  State  Board 
of  Education. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EDUCATIONAL     CHAMPION. 

j  The  cause  of  education  might  never  have  had 
I  Horace  Mann  as  its  great  champion  but  for  this 
!  combination  of  circumstances, — financial  embar 
i-assment,  the  absence  of  the  cheer,  the  comforts 
and  the  necessities  of  home,  and  the  bringing  to 
:  a  close  of  a  legislative  career  of  ten  years.  ^Wtale 
he  did  not  seek  the  secretaryship  of  the  Board  of 
Education,  it  was  brought  to  his  attention  at  a 
time  when  he  must  practically  reenter  upon  the 
practice  of  law,  which  had  for  him  very  little 
attraction.  He  enjoyed  individual  cases  but  not 
the  practice  of  law  in  the  abstract.  Writing  on 
June  19,  1837,  the  very  time  that  Edmund  D  wight 
was  urging  upon  him  the  consideration  of  the 
secretaryship,  Mr.  Mann  said:  "Employed  the 
whole  day  in  looking  up  a  technical  question  of 
law.  I  have  not,  therefore,  had  anything  in  my 
head  but  technical  combinations  of  technicalities. 
This  part  of  the  law  has  a  strong  tendency  to 
make  the  mind  nearsighted.  What  Coleridge 
says  generally,  and  very  untruly,  of  the  law  may 
be  just  when  applied  solely  to  this  part  of  it, — 
that  its  operation  upon  the  mind  is  like  that  of 
a  grindstone  upon  a  knife;  it  narrows  while  it 
sharpens.  And  is  it  not  true  that  every  object 
of  science,  however  grand  or  elevated,  has  its 
atoms,  its  minute  and  subtle  divisions  and  dis- 
criminations? The  degrees  of  longitude  upon 
the  earth's  surface,  the  zones  into  which  the  globe 
has  been  divided,  and  their  corresponding  lines 
and  compartments  in  the  heavens,  would  show 
pretty  well  in  the  registry  for  county  deeds;  but 


THE    EDUCATOR.  15 

yet,  in  surveying  and  affixing  the  bounds  and 
limits  to  these  vast  tracts  of  space,  what  minute 
calculations  must  the  geographer  and  astronomer 
make!  what  fractions,  what  decimals,  what  in- 
finitesimals! So  the  natural  philosopher,  whose 
patrimony,  bequeathed  to  him  by  science,  is  con- 
tinents and  oceans  and  suns,  must  deal  also  with 
globules  and  animalculse,  and  points  vanishing 
into  nothingness.  Who  can  have  more  subtle 
questions  to  settle  than  the  casuist  or  the  meta- 
physician? So  of  all.  In  one  direction  we  lose 
everything  in  magnificence,  in  vastness,  in  infin- 
ity; in  the  other  direction  we  are  equally  lost  in 
attempting  to  trace  to  their  elements  those  sub- 
stances, whatever  they  are,  whose  aggregate  is 
earth,  ocean,  air,  sky,  immensity.  Those  who 
see  nothing  in  the  law  but  technicalities,  apices, 
and  summa  jura,  are  about  as  wise  as  the  child 
who  mistook  the  infinite  host  of  the  stars  for  brass 
nails  that  fastened  up  the  earth's  ceiling."  The 
next  day  he  wrote :  "Another  day  in  search  of  the 
technical  rules  of  law.  If  the  whole  professional 
business  of  a  lawyer  consisted  only  in  investigat- 
ing and  determining  technical  rules,  one  might 
almost  be  excused  for  attempting  to  reach  justice 
summarily  through  the  instrumentality  of  that 
monster,  a  mob.  Those  who  only  have  to  pay 
for  technical  law  are  comparatively  fortunate; 
but  this  effort  for  two  days  in  succession  to  keep 
the  eye  fixed  on  the  edge  of  a  razor  is  apt  to  make 
one  a  little  nervous." 

Although  he  always  tried  to  find  satisfaction 
in  the  general  advantages  of  law  it  was  easy  to  see 
to  what  extent  it  bored  him  at  the  very  time  when 
Mr.  Dwight  was  urging  him  to  accept  the  secre- 
taryship of  the  Board.  It  ought  in  fairness  to  be 
said  that  whenever  he  had  a  case  it  absorbed  all 
his  thought  and  energy  for  the  time  being.  He 
had  this  to  say  at  one  time  regarding  the  intensity 


]fi  HORACE    J/AAT2V, 

of  his  devotion  to  every  case  that  he  had  in  hand: 
"The  truth  is  that  hearing  common  sermons 
gives  my  piety  the  consumption.  Ministers  seem 
to  me  not  to  care  half  so  much  about  the  salva- 
tion of  mankind  as  1  do  about  a  justice's  case. 
When  I  have  a  case  before  a  justice  of  the  peace 
I  can't  help  thinking  of  it  beforehand,  and  per- 
haps feeling  grieved  too,  afterward,  if  in  any 
respect  I  might  have  conducted  it  better.  If  I 
am  at  dinner,  the  merriment  or  the  philosophy  of 
the  table-talk  suggests  something,  which  I  put 
away  into  a  pigeon-hole  in  my  mind  for  the  case; 
and  when  I  read,  be  it  poetry  or  prose,  the  case 
hangs  over  the  page  like  a  magnet,  and  attracts 
to  itself  whatever  seems  to  be  pertinent  or  appli- 
cable. Success  or  failure  leaves  a  bright  or  a 
dark  hue  on  my  mind,  often  for  days." 

The  attractions  of  his  profession  lessened  as 
the  temptation  to  the  secretaryship  increased. 
Mr.  Mann  inclined  to  accept  the  position  on  the 
ground  of  adaptability  to  his  taste  and  desires 
before  he  could  bring  himself  to  admit  that  he 
was  equal  to  its  responsibilities.  In  his  personal 
diary,  intended  for  no  eyes  but  his  own,  he  wrote: 
"Ought  I  to  think  of  filling  this  high  and  respon- 
sible office?  Can  I  adequately  perform  its  duties? 
Will  my  greater  zeal  in  the  cause  than  that  of 
others  supply  the  deficiency  in  point  of  talent  and 
information?  Whoever  shall  undertake  that  task 
must  encounter  privation,  labor,  and  an  infinite 
annoyance  from  an  infinite  number  of  schemers. 
xHe  must  condense  the  steam  of  enthusiasts,  and 
soften  the  rock  of  the  incredulous.  What  toil  in 
arriving  at  a  true  system  himself!  what  toil  in 
infusing  that  system  into  the  minds  of  others! 
How  many  dead  minds  to  be  resuscitated!  how 
many  prurient  ones  to  be  soothed!  How  much  of 
mingled  truth  and  error  to  be  decompounded  and 
analyzed!  What  a  spirit  of  perseverance  would 


THE    EDUCATOR,  17 

be  needed  to  sustain  him  all  the  way  between  the 
inception  and  the  accomplishment  of  his  objects! 
But  should  he  succeed;  should  he  bring  forth  the 
germs  of  greatness  and  of  happiness  which  na- 
ture has  scattered  abroad,  and  expand  them  into 
maturity,  and  enrich  them  with  fruit;  should  he 
be -able  to  teach,  to  even  a  few  of  this  generation, 
how  mind  is  a  god  over  matter;  how  in  arranging 
objects  of  desire,  a  subordination  of  the  less  valu- 
able to  the  more  is  the  great  secret  of  individual 
happiness;  how  the  whole  of  life  depends  upon 
the  scale  winch  we  form  of  its  relative  values, — 
could  lie  do  this,  what  diffusion,  what  intensity, 
what  perpetuity  Of  blessings  he  would  confer! 
How  would  his  beneficial  influence  upon  man- 
kind widen  and  deepen  as  it  descended  forever! 

"I  cannot  think  of  that  station  as  regards  my- 
self without  feeling  both  hopes  and  fears,  desires 
and  apprehensions,  multiplying  in  my  mind, — so 
glorious  a  sphere,  should  it  be  crowned  with 
success;  so  heavy  with  disappointment  and  humil- 
iation, should  it  fail  through  any  avoidable  mis- 
fortune. What  a  thought,  to  have  the  future 
minds  of  such  multitudes  dependent  in  any  per- 
ceptible degree  upon  one's  own  exertions!  It  is 
such  a  thought  as  must  mightily  energize  or 
totally  overpower  any  mind  that  can  adequately 
comprehend  it." 

On  May  27,  1837,  the  governor  appointed  eight 
gentlemen  as  the  Board  of  Education.  Mr.  Mann 
was  one  of  these.  He  believed  this  Board  to  be 
like  a  spring  almost  imperceptible,  flowing  from 
the  highest  tableland  between  oceans,  destined  to 
deepen  and  widen  as  it  descended,  diffusing 
health  and  beauty  in  its  course  till  nations  shall 
dwell  upon  its  banks.  He  regarded  this  as  the 
first  great  movement  towards  an  organized  sys- 
tem of  common  school  education,  which  should  be 
at  once  thorough  and  universal. 


18  HORACE    MANX, 

At  this  time  he  said, — "I  would  much  sooner 
surrender  a  portion  of  the  territory  of  the  com- 

[f  monwealth  to  an  ambitious  and  aggressive  neigh- 

II  bor  than  I  would  surrender  the  minds  of  its  chil- 
dren to  the  domain  of  ignorance." 

On  June  29,  1837,  he  was  elected  secretary  of 
the  Board  of  Education.  Of  the  position  and  his 
relation  to  it,  he  says:  "Pew  undertakings  ac- 
cording to  my  appreciation  of  it  have  been 
greater.  I  know  of  none  which  may  be  more 
fruitful  in  beneficent  results.  God  grant  me  an 
annihilation  of  selfishness,  a  mind  of  wisdom,  a 
heart  of  benevolence!  How  many  men  I  shall 
meet  who  are  accessible  only  through  a  single  mo- 
tive, or  who  are  incased  in  prejudice  and  jealousy, 
and  need,  not  to  be  subdued  but  to  be  remodeled! 
how  many  who  will  vociferate  their  devotion  to 
the  public,  but  whose  thoughts  will  be  irftent  on 
themselves!  There  is  but  one  spirit  in  which 

^  these  impediments  can  be  met  with  success:  it  is 
the  spirit  of  self-abandonment,  the  spirit  of  mar- 
tyrdom.  To  this  I  believe  there  are  but  few,  of  all 
who  wear  the  form  of  humanity,  who  will  not 
yield.  I  must  not  irritate,  I  must  not  humble,  I 
must  not  degrade  anyone  in  his  own  eyes.  I 
must  not  present  myself  as  a  solid  body  to  oppose 
an  iron  barrier  to  any.  I  must  be  a  fluid  sort  of  a 
man,  adapting  myself  to  tastes,  opinions,  habits, 
manners,  so  far  as  this  can  be  done  without  hy- 
,  pocrisv  or  insincerity,  or  a  compromise  of  princi- 
ple. In  all  this  there  must  be  a  higher  object 
,than  to  win  personal  esteem,  or  favor,  or  worldly 

f  applause.     A  new  fountain  may  now  be  opened. 

v  Let  me  strive  to  direct  its  current  in  such  a  man- 
ner, that  if,  when  T  have  departed  from  life,  T 
may  still  be  permitted  to  witness  its  course,  T 
may  behold  it  broadening  and  deepening  in  an 
everlasting  progression  of  virtue  and  happiness. 
~"**«i->  "Henceforth,  so  long  as  I  hold  this  office,  I 


THE    EDUCATOR.  19 

devote  myself  to  the  supremest  welfare  of  man- 
kind upon  earth.  An  inconceivably  greater  labor 
is  undertaken.  With  the  highest  degree  of  pros- 
perity, results  will  manifest  themselves  but 


slowly.    JThe  harvest  is  far  distant  from  the  seedj     1 
time.     Faitn  is  the  orily  silstainer.    1  have  f aithi     |T 
iii  the  iinprovability  of  the  race, — in  their  acceler- 
ating improvability.     This  effort  may  do  appar-) 
ently  but  little.     But  mere  beginning  in  a,  goQdi 
cause  is  never  little.     Jf  we  can  get  this  "vast] 
wheel  into  any  perceptible  motion,  we  shall  have 
accomplished  much.     And  more  and  higher  quali- 
ties than  mere  labor  and  perseverance  will  be 
requisite.     Art  for  applying  will  be  no  less  neces- 
sary than  science  for  combining  and  deducing.^ 
No  object  ever  gave  scope  for  higher  powers,  or 
exacted  a  more  careful,  sagacious  use  of  them. 
At  first,  it  will  be  better  to  err  on  the  side  of 
caution  than  of  boldness.     When  walking  over     v 
quagmires,  we  should  never  venture  long  steps. 
However,  after  all  the  advice  which  all  the  sages 
who  ever  lived  could  give  there  is  no  such  security 
against  danger,  and  in  favor  of  success,  as  to 
undertake  it  with  a  right   spirit, — with  a   self- 
sacrificing  spirit.     Men  can  resist  the  influence  ' 
of  talent;  they  will  deny  demonstration,  if  need 
be;  but  few  will  combat  goodness  for  any  length 
of  time.     A  spirit  mildly  devoting  itself  to  a  good 
cause  is  a  certain  conqueror.     Love  is  a  universal 
solvent.     Wilfulness  will  maintain  itself  against 
persecution,  torture,  death,  but  will  be  fused  and 
dissipated   by  any   kindness,   forbearance,   sym- 
pathy.    Here  is  a  clew  given  by  God  to  lead  us 
through  the  labyrinth  of  the  world." 

Mr.  Mann  gave  up  the  practice  of  law  writh  no 
apparent  regrets  and  wrote,  almost  with  enthu- 
siasm: "I  have  abandoned  jurisprudence,  and  be- 
taken myself  to  the  larger  sphere  of  mind  and1 
morals.  Having  found  the  present  generation 


20  HORACE    MANN, 

composed  of  materials  almost  unmalleable,  I  am 
about  transferring  my  efforts  to  the  next.  Men/ 
are  cast-iron;  but  children  are  wax.  Strength) 
expended  upon  the  latter  may  be  effectual,  which] 
would  make  no  impression  upon  the  former." 

"Let  the  next  generation  be  my  client,"  was 
his  call  to  duty  as  he  turned  from  the  courts  to 
the  schools. 

The  spirit  with  which  he  entered  upon  this 
work  can  have  no  better  illustration  than  the 
reply  made  to  his  friends  who  thought  that  the 
office  should  have  some  better  title  than  "secre- 
tary of  the  Board  of  Education,"  "If  the  title  is 
not  sufficiently  honorable  now,  then  it  is  clearly 
left  for  me  to  elevate  it;  and  I  would  rather  be 
creditor  than  debtor  to  the  title." 


CHAPTER    V. 

AS     HE     FOUND     IT. 

It  was  a  great  task  upon  which  Mr.  Mann 
entered  when  he  became  secretary  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  State  Board  of  Education.  There  was 
never  greater  reverence  for  education  in  Massa- 
chusetts than  at  this  time.  The  population  was 
homogeneous ;  academies  were  numerous,  and  their 
inspiration  was  felt  throughout  the  state.  There 
was  much  home  reading  of  good  books,  and  every 
boy  of  any  ambition  worked  out  problems  and 
studied  by  himself.  Things  were  not  as  bad  edu- 
cationally as  Mr.  Mann  thought  them.  There-H 
was  fair  teaching  in  every  city  and  large  town. 
The  academies  were  enterprising.  On  a  school 
di5tr~0f~tenT  weeks  a  year  Mr.  Mann  was  a  good 
illustration  of  what  the  home  and  school  work 
was  accomplishing.  Massachusetts  has  never 
seen  the  time  when  she  had  a  larger  proportion 
of  good  scholars  and  grand  men  than  when  the 
Board  of  Education  was  organized.  X  Whenever 
an  enthusiast  compares  existing  conditions  with 
his  ideals  he  finds  the  contrast  between  that 
which  is  and  that  which  ought  to  be  enough  to 
exasperate  a  man  of  less  zeal  than  himself.  There 
has  been  no  time  in  the  history  of  Massachusetts, 
from  the  day  of  Peregrine  White  to  this  year  in 
which  the  wife  of  the  President  of  the  United"  States 
invites  a  Boston  kindergartner  to  apply  all  mod- 
ern arts  and  devices  to  her  daughter's  education, 
in  which  there  was  a  higher  class  of  talent  devot- 
ing its  thought  and  energy  to  education  or  mak- 
ing greater  sacrifices  for  the  improvement  of 


22  HOKJLCI;    ^fANN, 

childhood  than  in  the  decade  in  which  Horace 
Mann  enlisted  under  the  banner  of  the  public 
schools. 

W.  E.  Channing,  Theodore  Parker,  Samuel  J. 
May,  Edward  Everett,  Governor  Briggs,  Josiah 
Qui.ncy,  Robert  Rantoul,  Jr.,  Edmund  Dwight, 
James  G.  Carter  and  Cyrus  Pierce  were  ready 
to  say  and  do  all  in  their  power  for  the  good  of  the 
schools.  What  a  surprise  it  would  be  to-day  to 
have  the  mayor  of  Boston  give;the  secretary  of  the 
Board  of  Education  a  check  for  f  1,500  from  his 
own  funds  to  be  used  in  any  way  he  saw  fit  for  the 
advancement  of  public  school  education,  as  his 
grandfather  Josiah  Quincy,  mayor  of  Boston,  did 
fifty-five  years  ago!  What  a  sensation  would  be 
created  in  the  legislature  were  it  announced  that 
some  individual  had  made  a  donation  of  f  10,000 
for  the  professional  training  of  teachers,  as  was 
done  less  than  sixty  years  ago  by  Edmund 
Dwight.  Jonathan  Phillips,  a  private  citizen,  of 
whom  nothing  else  seems  to  be  known,  sent  Mr. 
Mann  his  check  for  $500  to  use  as  he  thought  best 
in  the  cause  of  public  education.  These  condi- 
tions need  to  be  understood  in  order  that  one  may 
appreciate  the  circumstances  that  led  the  president 
of  the  Massachusetts  senate  to  become  the  secre- 
lary  of  the  Board  of  Education.  The  people  as  a 
whole  had  no  sympathy  with  the  reformers  who 
were  shouting  long  and  loud  about  the  degeneracy 
of  the  times.  Nor  did  Mr.  Mann  have  any  adequate 
grounds  for  his  early  denunciation.  Indeed  he 
had  no  thought  of  attacking  any  of  the  work  or 
workers  of  the  day.  All  that  actuated  him  might 
well  inspire  any  man  in  any  age  or  in  any  commu 
nity  to  make  even  greater  sacrifices  than  those 
which  he  proposed  or  experienced.  It  was  not  that 
Mr.  Mann  wished  to  criticise  tin*  work  done  .or  to 
antagonize  the  teachers  in  their  work  but  he  felt, 
as  who  does  not  feel  to-day,  that  America's  future 


TEE    EDUCATOR.  23 

depends  upon  the  best  common  school  education  -> 
for  those  who  need  it  most.  His  sympathies  were 
atoj^-adau^  dcfGctive~t?hresesT  He  devoted 
much  of  his  legislative  energy  to  providing  an  asy- 
lum for  the  insane  and  educational  advantages 
for  the  deaf,  dumb  and  blind.  This  led  him  natur- 
alfy,  inevitably,  to  realize  that  many  children  had 
very  little  opportunity  for  school  life,  and  that 
even  the  best  teaching  was  far  below  the  standard! 
It  is  as  true  now  as  it  was  then.  The  fact  that  he 
had  but  ten  weeks  in  school  in  any  year  of  his  ~" 
childhood  inspired  him  to  plan  for  something 
more  and  better  for  coming  generations.  "Let! 
the  next  generation  be  my  client"  was  his  watch- 
word. 

Academies  were  much  more  influential  then 
than  now,  and  they  were  more  efficient  than  the 
public  schools.  They  had  steadily  gained  since 
the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war.  In  1780 
there  were  few  private  schools,  but  in  1837,  when 
Horace  Mann  began  his  work  $328,000  was  paid 
in  one  year  as  tuition  in  the  academies  and  private 
schools  of  Massachusetts.  This  popularity  of  the 
academies  was  at  the  expense  of  the  public 
schools  in  the  wealthy  communities.  In  1837  the 
average  expenditure  per  pupil  in  the  state  was 
$2.81  while  in  the  twenty-nine  most  populous  and 
wealthy  towns  it  was  but  $2.21.  ,  - 

Enthusiasm  for  academies  created  the  impres- 
sion that  the  education  of  youth  was  of  much 
greater  moment  than  of  children.  In  consequence 
little  was  done  for  children  under  ten  years  of 
age  and  in  some  communities  nothing.  Nan- 
tucket,  then  having  9,000  inhabitants,  made  no 
provision  whatever  for  the  younger  or  the  older 
children  but  only  for  the  grammar  grade  pupils. 

There  was  almost.no  attempt  to  do  anything  at 
public  expense  for  children  of  academic  age.     The    I 
educational  ardor  and  aspiration  therefore  was    ' 


>2±  HORACE    MAXN, 

tending  more  and  more  to  benefit  the  few  who 
would  make  some  adequate  return  to  the  com- 
munity in  a  scholastic  way.  ^There  was  no  for- 
eign population,  and  no  parent  allowed  his  chil- 
dren to  grow  up  in  ignorance.  The  home  did 
much,  the  grammar  school  and  the  academy  did 
more  and  the  community  was  developing  a  good 
class  of  citizens. 

Mr.  Mann  saw  how  important  a  part  the 
churches  played  in  the  patronage  of  the  acad- 
emies, and  his  religious  prejudices  were  aroused. 
rf*.  —  -HP  had  honest  doubts  regarding  the  good  accom- 
plished by  sectarian  schools.  He  had  high  ideals 
of  the  good  which  must  result  from  the  education 
(together  of  children  of  all  classes.  It  was  a 
blending  of  fear  and  hope  combined  with  intense 
conviction  that  actuated  him  when  he  announced 
that  his  law  library  was  for  sale,  bought  such 
educational  books  as  were  to  be  found,  and  went 
to  a  quiet  home  at  Franklin  for  a  few  days  of 
study  and  meditation. 

His  special  preparation  for  the  work  was  not 
definite.  He  had  seen  little  of  schools  as  a  pupil, 
had  taught  three  short  terms  in  rural  schools,  had 
instructed  for  a  short  time  in  college,  had  served 
for  eight  years  on  the  school  board  of  Dedham, 
had  been  closely  associated  with  such  inspiring 
work  as  the  education  of  the  deaf,  dumb  and 
blind,  was  the  close  friend  of  all  the  reformers 
in  education  from  the  outside  but  knew  few  teach- 
ers and  had  rarely  attended  educational  gather- 
ings. Maria  Edgeworth  and  James  Simpson  were 
his  most  available  authors. 

Among  the  objects  that  he  set  himself  to  ac- 
•  •omplish  were  the  awakening  of  public  sentimentv 
through  the  holding  of  public  educational  gather- 
ings, the  introduction  of  school  apparatus,  the"' 
substituting  of  oral  for  text-book  instruction,  the  ^ 
training  of  teachers,  the  better  construction  of 


THE    EDUCATOR.  25 

J 

schoolhouses,  the  use  of  better  books,  better  ar-j 
ralTgelnent  of  studies,  better  modes  of  instruction.  ! 
He  went  into  retirement  at  Franklin  for  a  time 
and  prepared  an  address  for  the  awakening  of 
public  sentiment.  When  he  began  his  career  by 
holding  revival  meetings  in  the  interest  of  educa- 
tion Tn'  every  village  from  Xantucket  to  Pittsfield, 
he  could  not  understand  why  people  cared  infinitely 
more  for  a  political  speech  than  an  educational 
preachment,  why  they  would  leave  him  and  go  ten 
miles  to  listen  to  a  fourth-rate  politician.  In  the 
town  of  Barre,  for  illustration,  the  president  of 
the  County  Association  and  the  president  of  the 
American  Institute  of  Instruction  went  twelve 
miles  to  hear  a  political  address  when  he  was 
lecturing  upon  education  in  their  town.  Of 
Springfield,  Mr.  Maim  wrote,  "In  point  of  num- 
bers, a  miserable  meeting  it  has  been."  At  Pitts- 
field  there  were  only  two  or  three  people  present. 
At  Worcester  he  said,  "On  the  whole,  I  think  a 
little  dent  has  been  made  in  this  place."  After 
speaking  at  Great  Harrington,  he  wrote,  "To  make 
an  impression  in  Berkshire  in  regard  to  the 
schools  is  like  trying  to  batter  down  Gibraltar  with 
one's  fist."  After  Northampton,  he  wrote,  "Ah, 
me!  I  have  hold  of  so  large  a  mountain  that  there 
is  much  danger  that  I  shall  break  my  own  back  in 
trying  to  lift  it."  Of  Barnstable  he  wrote,  "As 
miserable  a  convention  as  can  well  be  conceived. 
I  will  work  in  this  moral  as  well  as  physical  sand- 
bank of  a  county  till  1  can  get  some  new  things 
to  grow  out  of  it."  Of  Dedham,  his  old  home 
town,  he  says,  "The  convention  was  a  meagre, 
spiritless,  discouraging  affair.  A  few  present 
and  all  who  were  present  chilled,  choked  by  their 
own  fewness.  If  the  schoolmaster  is  abroad  in 
this  county  I  should  like  to  meet  him." 

When   Mr.   Mann   made  a   political   speech  at 
Westport,  a  hundred  people  went  over  from  New 


2(j  HORACti    MA\X, 

Bedford  to  hear  him,  and  the  whole  town  turned 
out;  but  when,  a  few  evenings  later,  he  spoke  in 
the  same  place jpii  education,  no  one  came  from 
New  Bedford,  and  scarcely  any  one  came  out  at 
Westport.  At  Welllleet  he  had  "a  miserable,  con- 
temptible, deplorable  convention/' 

On  a  second  visit  to  Pittstield,  he  found  that  no  I 
arrangements  had'  been  made  to  prepare  the 
schoolroom  for. the  Convention,  so  he  and  George 
X.  Briggs,  at  that  time  governor  of  the  state,  pur- 
chased a  broom  and  themselves  swept  the  school- 
house  and  put  it  in  order.  At  ten  o'clock,  the 
time  appointed  for  the  convention,  there  was  not 
an  individual  present.  At  11.30  o'clock  eight  peo- 
ple had  come.  This  is  a  sample  of  the  "enthu- 
siasm" with  which  his  work  was  received.  It 
was  very  annoying  to  him  to  feel  that  as  a  lawyer, 
politician  and  president  of  the  senate  he  was  a 
popular  speaker,  but  that  as  an  educator  he  could 
arouse  little  or  no  enthusiasm.  Strange  as  this 
seems  there  have  been  many  experiences  of  the 
officers  of  the  Board  of  Education  in  recent  years 
not  unlike  these  of  sixty  years  ago.  Many  meet- 
ings are  held  which  are  attended  by  almost  none 
except  teachers.  In  many  towns  already  men- 
tioned there  have  been  educational  gatherings 
with  much  talent  provided  at  which  the  attend- 
ance was  scandalously  small. "i^But  Mr.  Mann'sV 
enthusiasm  did  not  wane,  and  he  ultimately  had/ 
the  state  thoroughly  aroused.  This  was  his  great 
reward. 

His  new  life  was  full  of  embarrassing  incidents. 
The  first  Sunday  that  he  was  away  from  home  on 
his  new  work  was  spent  at  Martini's  "Vineyard. 
There  were  three  evangelical  churches  in  Edgar- 
town, 'a  Congregational,  Baplist  and  Methodist. 
Everyone  knew  that  he  was  non-evangelical  in  his 
belief,  and  there  was  great  curiosity  to  know  at 
which  of  the  churches  he  would  worship;  no  one 


ERSIT 
THE    EDUCATOR.  27 

had  conceived  the  idea<  that  Jie  could  avoid  attend- 
ing any.  When  the  day  arrived,  to  the  consterna- 
tion of  all,  he  drove  over  to  see  the  Chapoquiddie 
Indians,  with  their  guardian,  .Mr!  Thaxter,  who 
wished  his  advice  regarding  the  intellectual  and 
moral  improvement  of  the.  tribe.  He  met  the 
Indians  at  the  meeting-house-sehoolhouse  where 
the  Sunday  school  was  held  six  months  in  the 
year.  This  Sunday  school  was  the  only  school 
maintained  for  them,  and  this  was  for  half  the 
year.  This  Sunday  episode  produced  a  scandal, 
and  the  scene  can  be  better  imagined  than  de- 
scribed when  a  clergyman  after  riding  nine  miles 
on  Monday  morning  to  attend  the  educational 
meeting  learned  that  the  head  of  the  educational 
system  of  Massachusetts  had  been  uto  ride"  in- 
stead of  to  church  the  previous  day. 

This  work,  however,  was  not  without  its  en- 
couragements. On  November  10th  of  his  first 
year  he  went  to  Salem  and  held  a  convention  dur- 
ing the  day.  He  was  booked  also  for  an  evening 
lecture  in  the  regular  course  of  the  city.  The 
convention  was  very  thinly  attended,  even  his 
own  personal  friends,  like  Rantoul  and  Salton- 
stall,  not  being  present,  but  the  few  who  wen- 
there- wrere  so  aroused  by  his  address  that  they 
insisted  that  it  should  be  repeated  as  the  lyceuiii 
lecture  of  the  -evening,  on  which  occasion  the 
popular  response  was  so  hearty  as  to  cheer  him 
in  his  work  for  many  a  day.  The  first  four  years 
were  largely  devoted  to  these  crusades,  to  the 
reading  of  the  various  school  reports  of  the  state, 
and  to  writing  his  own  state  report.  Greater  de 
votion  or  faithfulness  was  never  witnessed  in  any 
school  official. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    NOKMAL-  SCHOOLS. 

The  normal  schools  required  much  time  and 
energy,  sacrifice  and  wisdom.  It  was  a  great  in- 
novation that  wras  proposed  by  James  G.  Carter, 
the  most  far-sighted  man  of  that  wonderful  edu- 
cational period.  It  was  his  thought  first,  his 
devotion  and  wisdom  to  the  last,  as  it  was  Mr. 
Edmund  D wight's  gift  of  f  10,000  that  made  pos- 
sible the  first  normal  schools  this  side  the  sea,  but 
to  Mr.  Mann  the  honor  and  the  glory  have  been 
and  ever  will  be  given  and  rightly,  too,  although 
one  may  fail  to  explain  the  equity  in  such  an 
assignment. 

In  1047  Massachusetts  took  a  position  educa- 
tionally that  has  been  equaled  by  no  other  com- 
munity on  this  continent  when  one  considers  its 
significance  in  point 'of  time,  conditions  and  pro- 
jection through  the  subsequent  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years.  The  discussion  as  to  the  relative  in- 
debtedness of  the  colonists  to  England  and  the 
Netherlands  lias  no  place  here, — suffice  it  to  say 
that  no  community  in  either  hemisphere  has  any 
such  record  of  honor  in  education  for  so  long  a 
period  as  has  Massachusetts  since  KJ47.  The 
methods  have  changed  and  the  emphasis  has  been 
shifted  from  time  to  time,  but  it  is  one  uninter- 
rupted record  of  loyalty  to  education  and  of  gen- 
eral progress.  The  apparent  lapses  are  more  in 
the  seeming  than  in  the  fact. 

Mr.JMann  was  never  a  historian:  he  had  not  the 
historian's  instinct  or  training  and  his  utterances 
upon  the  decadence  of  the  system  from  1047  to 


TEE    EDUCATOR.  29 

must  be  taken  with  several  grains  of  allow- 
ance for  his  talent  in  special  pleading.  It  is  one 
of  the  requisites  of  a  reformer  to  be  able  to  mag- 
nify his  own  theory  and  practice,  and  to  minify 
all  that  has  preceded  him.  This  vicious  attitude 
toward  other  good  workers  is  an  indispensable 
virtue  in  any  reformer.  He  must  see  only  the 
weakness  and  wrong  in  the  past  and  only  strength 
and  right  in  his  own  plans  and  purposes.  John 
the  Baptist's  denunciations  were  vital  to  the 
love  and  mercy  of  Jesus.  James  G.  Carter  was 
more  far-sighted  and  had  greater  wisdom  in  deal- 
ing with  conditions;  Edmund  Dwight  had  more 
means  and  the  consecration  to  use  them,  but 
neither  had  the  heroism  to  say  as  did  Horace  Mann 
that  from  1647  to  ISlMJ  the  lawn  were  altered 
again  and  again,  to  adrfpt  them  to  the  decreasing 
demands  of  the  public  in  regard  to  schools. 

There  has  been  one  pertinent  illustration  in 
modern  times  of  the  inevitable  tendency  to  be- 
little one's  predecessors  in  educational  activity. 
The  only  real  "reform"  movement  in  education 
was  twenty  years  ago  when  Quincy,  Mass.,  at- 
tained a  national  reputation  through  Charles  Fran- 
cis Adams,  Jr.,  who  claimed  to  have  reformed  the 
schools  of  that  town  in  his  great  pamphlet  upon 
"The  New  Departure." 

From  1852  to  1856  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
senior,  was  chairman  of  the  school  board  of 
Quincy.  The  tone  of  his  report  was  all  that  any 
reformer  could  ask.  His  administration  was  re- 
markably successful. 

1S52.  "The  standard  of  instruction  has  greatly 
risen,  is  rising  yet.  In  no  town  has  the  advance 
been  more  marked  than  in  Quincy.  All  the  teach- 
ers for  the  past  year  are  entitled  to  great  credit. 

1853.  "The  schools  generally  are  in  a  very  sat- 
isfactory condition.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  of 
them  that  they  will  now  compare  with  schools  of 


30  HORACE    MANN, 

the  same  grade  anywhere.  Nowhere  has  the  re- 
sult been  more  satisfactory  .  .  .  highly  satisfac- 
tory. .  .  .  Highest  approbation,  etc. 

1854.  ''The  grammar  school  is  now  in  all  re- 
spects in  an  excellent  condition. 

IsrM.  "\Ye  have  heard  recitations  in  the  high 
school  in  French,  in  geometry,  in  algebra,  in  Latin 
and  in  Greek  which  would  have  done  credit  to 
any  school  in  our  commonwealth." 

No  more  could  have  been  said  in  praise  of  the 
schools  than  is  to  be  found  on  every  page  of  the 
reports  written  by  Charles  Francis  Adams  re- 
garding the  Quincy  schools  from  IS.")!'  to  1850. 
Nor  is  it  miscellaneous  praise  for  the  virtues  are 
discrimiuately  set  forth.  He  then  resigned  his 
place  to  his  sou,  John  Quincy  Adams,  who  was 
chairman  in  1857  and  59,  GO  aiid  6:>,  70,  71,  72,  73. 
Of  the  schools  he  wrote  with  the  same  enthusiasm 
as  his  father  had  done. 

1857.  "The  results  are  equal  to  the  -most  san- 
guine expectations.  There  is  not  one  of  these 
schools  respecting  which  we  would  speak  in  terms 
other  than  highest  commendation. 

1859.  "The  schools  are  a  source  of  congratu- 
lation and  pride.  .  .  .     Schools  are  excellent.  .  .  . 
Method  and  manner  with  children  is  peculiarly 
happy.     Of  the  twenty-one  schools  in  town  not 
one  is  bad  ...  a  feeling  of  general  joy  and  sur- 
prise. 

1860.  "The  results  are  highly  satisfactory  .  .  . 
schools  are  good,  most  of  them  very  good.     It  is 
with  hearty  satisfaction  that  your  committee  can 
honestly  present  so  flattering  a  report. 

1870.  "The  primary  schools  are  in  excellent 
condition.  The  intermediate  schools  and  their 
teachers  merit  our  highest  commendation;  they 
are  all  good.  The  high  school  meets  our  highest 
expectation." 

Tn  view  of  what  is  to  be  said  by  his  brother 


THE    EDUCATOR.  31 

three  years  Jater  the  following  is  of  special  inter- 
est. 

1871.  "We  have  a  custom  of  subjecting  every 
school  in  town  to  a  searching  scrutiny  by  the  whole 
committee  at  the  close  of  the  school  year.  This 
duty  was  performed  with  a  good  deal  of  thorough- 
ness. All  are  excellent  and  all  are  improving;" 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  a  younger  son, 
came  upon  the  board  the  next  year,  1872,  and 
these  schools  that  had  been  "highly  satisfactory," 
"in  excellent  condition,"  "credit  to  any  town  in 
the  commonwealth,"  "nothing  better  anywhere," 
"equal  to  the  most  sanguine  expectations,"  "man- 
ner with  children  peculiarly  happy,"  "examined 
with  a  searching  scrutiny,"  "honestly  present  a 
nattering  report,"  etc.,  etc.,  were  found  to  have 
gone  all  to  pieces  for  the  accommodation  of  the 
third  member  of  the  same  family  Mr.  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  who  says: 

1875.  "This  vain  attempt  to  build  upon  nothing, 
costing  the  country  untold  millions  of  money  .  .  . 
will  surely  lead  us  to  mental  bankruptcy  if  the 
stupendous  fraud  [so  vigorously  praised  by  father 
and  brother]  is  not  soon  abolished  and  healthier 
plans  and  better  teaching,  etc.  These  methods 
[of  his  father  and  brother]  turned  scholars  into 
parrots  and  made  meaningless  farce  of  education. 
For  real  results  the  teacher  cared  nothing.  Smat- 
ter  was  the  order  of  the  day  [under  the  system  of 
his  father  and  brother].  The  teachers  [of  the 
father  and  brother]  were  old,  lymphatic,  listless 
schoolmarms.  The  examinations  [of  his  father 
and  brother]  were  a  study  for  the  humorist." 

It  does  not  require  a  humorist  to  enjoy  the 
assurance  with  which  this  third  member  of  the 
Adams  family  praises  the  results  under  his  ad- 
ministration. 

1875.  "The  application  of  these  new  ideas  has 
produced  as  great  a  change  in  teaching  as  Har- 


32  HORACE      l/.LV.V, 

vey's  great  discovery  did  in  medicine.  The  in- 
fant schools  are  transformed  from  painful  to 
pleasant  places.  The  excellency  or  peculiarity 
of  our  schools  has  excited  a  great  deal  of  interest 
among  those  persons  who  are  observant  of  such 
matters.  The  people  of  Quincy  are  gathering  a 
harvest  of  greater  volume  and  value,  etc.  .  .  . 
Really  surprising  progress  has  been  effected  in  the 
schools.  ...  A  high  degree  of  excellency  has 
been  attained  where  excellence  is  most  unusual. 
.  .  .  We  must  frankly  confess  that  we  are  in  a 
great  measure  satisfied  with  the  work  we  are 
doing,  and  have  good  reason  to  anticipate  a  con- 
stantly increasing  improvement  as  we  apply  our 
principles  more  thoroughly." 

This  chapter  from  modern  history  is  introduced 
merely  to  show  that  thi*  tendency  of  human  na- 
ture  is  very  general  and  Mr.  Mann  must  not  be 
censured  for  overdrawing  the  conditions  of  the 
schools  before  he  entered  upon  the  work.  The 
bad  is  always  indescribably  bird,  the  good  is  never 
extravagantly  good,  the  indifference  in  unevent- 
ful times  is  always  heartrending  to  one  who  is 
keenly  alive  to  all  the  responsibilities  of  the  hour. 
It  is  equally  true  in  political,  social,  educational 
and  religious  life,  and,  until  human  nature 
changes, it  will  continue  to  be  so.  Indifference  can 
be  aroused  and  the  best  can  triumph  over  the 
worst  only  when  someone  possesses  the  masterly 
power  to  make  and  meet  a  crisis.  This  power 
Horace  Mann  possessed,  and  to  him  rather  than 
to  any  other  man  of  his  time  belongs  the  honor 
and  the  glory. 

Thejtiormal  schools  introduced  the  modern  im- 
provements to  the  American  schools.  The  acad- 
emies which  came  in  with  the  close  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary war  were  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the 
normal  schools  for  half  a  century.  Nearly  every 
teacher  in  Massachusetts  receive^  his  instruction 


THE     EDUCATOR.  33 

and  inspiration  at  a  New  England  academy.  Too 
much  can  hardly  be  said  in  their  praise,  but  the 
tim£  came  when  they  were  thought  to  be  possibili-" 
ties  for  the  rich  alone.  This  fear  was  never  fully 
justified  since  the  larger  number  in  most  of  these 
academies  were  poor  boys  "working  their  way/' 
but  for  some  cause  the  public  schools  in  the 
wealthier  places  were  not  universally  patronized 
by  the  "higher  classes"  of  the  community.  There 
was  a  final  struggle  between  the  inherited  aris- 
tocratic sentiment  from  across  the  seas  and  the 
new-born  democracy  of  America. 

Until  the  academy  came,  the  sons  of  wealthy 
people  were  largely  educated  in  England.  That 
was  the  one  aristocratic  ideal.  The  academy  was 
the  transition  .for  the  remnant  of  aristocracy  to 
the  new  democracy.  It  matters  little  whether  or 
not  there  was  any  justification  for  the  fears  enter- 
tained from  1826  to  1837;  the  factjbatthese  fejirs 
existed  necessitated  a  radical  transformation  to 
uniform  democracy  in  matters  of  education.  Tt 
was  this  transformation  that  Mr.  Mann  accom- 
plished and  the  normal  school  is  in  large  meas- 
ure the  instrumentality. 

The  first  academy  came  at  the  close  of  the 
French  and  Indian  war  (1763)  through  the  gener- 
osity of  William  Dummer,  educated  in  the  Bos- 
ton Latin  school  and  in  the  academies  of  England. 
This  was  followed  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution- 
ary war  by  Phillips  Andover  and  Leicester 
academies,  and  a  score  of  other  similar  institu- 
tions. These  furnished  teachers  for  all  the  better 
schools  but  they  rapidly  removed  from  the  com- 
mon schools  all  traces  of  Latin  and  Greek.  In 
1824  there  were  but  seven  towns  in  the  state 
required  by  law  to  provide  for  the  teaching  of 
Latin.  The  teachers  were  very  poorly  qualified 
for  their  work  as  soon  as  they  were  not  required 
to  teach  Latin.  That  requirement  in  the  earlier 


;U  HORACE     MANN, 

days  had  provided  scholarly  teachers.  When  that 
was  abandoned  the  standard  for  men  was  ability 
to  "fight  it  out"  in  the  winter  schools,  and  for 
women  availability  for  the  summer  schools. 

In  1824-5  James  G.  Carter  of  Lancaster  wrote 
an  earnest  series  of  articles,  over  the  signature 
"Franklin,"  for  the  Boston  Patriot.  His  claim 
was  that  "the  first  step  towrard  reform  in  our 
system  of  popular  education,  is  the  scientific  prep- 
aration of  teachers  for  the  free  schools.  And  the 
only  measure  that  will  insure  to  the  public  the 
attainment  of  this  object,  is  to  establish  an  insti- 
tution for  the  very  purpose." 

At  this  time  Horace  Mann  was  beginning  the 
practice  of  law  in  bedhain.  Mr.  Carter  wrote 
upon  this  theme  with  great  ability  for  ten  years 
before  Mr.  Mann's  attention  was  given  to  the  sub- 
ject with  any  great  devotion.  To  this  agitation 
by  Mr.  Carter  we  owe  the  consecration  of  Mr. 
Mann,  and  we  can  readily  understand  the  disap- 
pointment of  Mr.  Carter  and  the  indignation  of 
his  friends  when  Mr.  Mann  was  elected  to  the 
secretaryship  which  Mr.  Carter  had  every  reason 
to  expect  would  come  to  him. 

The  first  memorable  act  of  the  board  was  to 
recommend  the  passage  of  a  law  providing  for  the 
establishment  of  normal  schools.  InJVIarchJSSS, 
lion.  Kdmund  Dwight,  one  of  the  leading  mem- 
bers of  tne  Doard"  offered  through  Mr.  Mann 
SK).(KM)  for  the  establishment  of  a  normal  school 
under  the  auspices  of  the  state  board,  provided 
i he  Legislature  would  appropriate  a  similar  sum. 
Within  a  month,  April  1!). — a  date  memorable 
from  so  many  events, — the  Legislature  accepted 
the  proposition.  On  May  30  the  state  board  voted 
to"  establlsn  a  school  in  Plymouth  countf  and 
I  ><-cember  28  it  voted  to  locate  two  others  at  Lex- 
ington and  Barre.  The  schools  were  opened,  at 
Lexington  July  3,  1839;  at  Barre,  September  4, 


THE   EDUCATOR:  35 

1839;  at  Bridgewater,  September  9,   1840.     The  ^ 
•schools  at   Lexington  and  Barre  were   both   re- 
nioved  so  that  Bridgewater  is  really  the  oldest   I 
normal  school  on  the  continent.     The  location  of 
this  school  was  due  to  the  activity  of  Rev.  Charles 
Brooks  of  Hingham  who  had  visited  Prussia  in 
1835  and   had   steadily   advocated   the   Prussian 
system   of   professional   training   for    Massachu- 
setts.    Thus  really  the  normal  schools  were  Mn- 
spired  by  the  Prussian  systeift. 

The  first  school  opened  was  at  Lexington  under 
the  principalship  of  Cyrus  Pierce,  one  of  Amer- 
ica's great  teachers..  At  the  opening  only  three 
persons  presented  themselves  for  admission.  II 
grew  slowly  but  steadily.  Mr.  Pierce  did  all  the 
teaching,  superintended  the  interest  of  the  board- 
ing house,  .rose  every  morning  in  the  winter  at 
3  o'clock  to  build  the  fires;  a  great  part  of  the 
time  sleeping  but  three  hours  a  night.  The  open- 
ing day  to  which  Mr.  Mann  had  looked  forward 
with  bright  anticipation  proved  to  be  one  of  the 
most  discouraging.  He  wrote  of  it,  that  night: 
k'What  remains  but  more  exertion,  more  and  more, 
till  it  must  succeed."  Two  months  later,  on  Sep- 
tember  4th,  the  Barre  school  was  opened  with 
twenty  students.  The  governor  of  the  common- 
wealth (George  N.  Briggs)  opened  the  school  with 
a  fine  address  upon  the  origin,  progress,  advan- 
tages and  hopes  of  the  normal  school. 

Mr.  Mann  gave  much  attention  to  these  schools, 
notably  to  the  one  at  Lexington.  He  was  greatly 
annoyed  at  the  criticisms  which  were  heard  on 
every  hand.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  talent 
which  applied  for  training  was  not  always  the 
best;  the  course  \vas  all  too  -brief;  the  equip- 
ment too  limited,  There  were  jmanj  Academies 
that  offered  better  opportunities  for  scholarship 
and  none  of  these  institutions  of  learning  were 
friendly.  The  teachers  alreadv  at  work  were  in- 


30  HORACE     MA.\\. 

clined  to  interpret  every  argument  for  trained 
teachers  as  a  reflection  on  themselves.  Not  every 
"normalite"  succeeded  as  a  teacher,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  the  local  authorities.  The  ideal  normal 
was  far  removed  from  the  real  school  and  no  one 
appreciated  this  more  than  Mr.  Mann  whose  heart 
failed  him  many  times  in  the  first  years  of  the 
schools. 

Here  are  sample  sentences  from  persons  of  edu- 
cational influence:  "Too  much  is  claimed  for  the 
normal  schools  in  their  infant  state.?  "The  prin- 
cipals of  the  normal  schools  are  comparatively  in- 
experienced in  public  school-keeping.  They  are 
without  that  practice  which  makes  perfect.''  "The 
experience  of  a  graduate  of  a  normal  school, 
through  the  model  school,  is  less  than  two  weeks." 

Mr.  Mann  was  stimulated  to  greater  effort  and 
to  higher  endeavor  because  of  these  criticisms. 
He  heard  every  word  and  used  the  judgment  of 
his  critics  as  his  own  instructor  in  perfecting 
these  schools.  The  normal  schools,  now  the  glory 
of  the  educational  work  of  America,  owe  more 
than  will  ever  be  expressed  to  his  heroism,  pa- 
tience, devotion  and  skill. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
OPPOSITION. 

In  the  spring  of  1840,  the  formal  opposition  to 
the  Board  of  Education  manifested  itself.  The 
Observer,  the  ^Recorder  and  some  of  the  Boston  dai- 
lies were  making  very  bitter  attacks  upon  the 
board,  and  in  March,  1S40,  these  assumed  the  pro- 
portion, as  Mr.  Mann  said,  of  an  "atrocious  at- 
tack.'1 He  was  fearful  that  the  opposition  would 
win  in  the  Legislature.  Referring  to  this  possi- 
bility, he  said:  "This  is  bad.  I  must  submit;  but 
the  cause  shall  not  die  if  I  can  sustain  or  resus- 
citate it.  New  modes  may  be  found  if  old  ones 
fail.  Perseverance,  perseverance,  and  so  on  a 
thousand -times  and  ten  thousand  times  ten  thou- 
sand." What  a  spirit!  It  was  for  such  an  hour 
that  he  had  come  into  power. 

His  election  was  a  great  disappointment  to 
James  G.  Carter  and  his  friends.  Mr.  Carter  had 
made  the  Board  of  Education  and  the  normal 
schools  a  possibility;  to  him  belonged  the  credit, 
to  him  should  have  gone  the  honor,  had  the  ques- 
tion of  honor  been  the  first  consideration.  Hon. 
Edmund  Dwight  was  not  unappreciative  of  the 
service  rendered  by  Mr.  Tarter,  but  lie  foresaw  the 
emergencies  that  must  arise  ami  he  was  con- 
vinced that  it  was  a  question  of  service  to  a  cause 
and  not  of  honor  to  a  man;  and  when  the  conflicts 
raged  with  such  fury  from  March,  1840,  to  Janu- 
ary, 1S47,  the  wisdom  of  the  choice  Was  demon- 
stinted.  There  was  not  another  man  in  the  state 
probably  who  could  or  would  have  led  to  victory 
<ts  did  Horace  Mann. 


;js  H  o  it  AC  i: 

Things  were  not  as  bad  in  the  Legislature  in 
ls-40  as  Mr.  Mann  feared,  for  the  "bigots  and  van- 
dals," as  he  styled  them,  were  defeated  by  a  vote 
of  U45  to  182.  The  author  of  this  opposition  move- 
ment was  the  next  year  dropped  from  the  Legis- 
lature by  his  constituency  "as  a  reward  of  his 
malevolence.''  This  was  encouraging  to  Mr.  Mann 
who  wrote,  in  the  exuberance  of  victory:  "The 
common  school  is  the  institution  which  can  re- 
ceive and  .train  up  children  in  the  elements  of  all 
good  knowledge  and  of  virtue  before  they  are 
subjected  to  the.  alienating  conceptions  of  life. 
This  institution  is  the  greatest  discovery  ever 
I  made  by  man;  we  repeat  it,  the  common  school  is 
I  the  greatest  discovery  ever  made  by  man.  In  two 
grand  characteristic  attributes,  it  is  snpereniinent 
— over  all  others;  first  in  its  universality,  for  it  is  capa- 
cious  enough  to  receive  and  cherish  in  its  parental 
bosom  every  child  that  comes  into  the  world;  and 
second,  in  the  timeliness  of  the  aid  it  proffers, — 
its  early,  seasonable  supplies  of  counsel  and  guid- 
ance making  security  antedate  danger.  Other 
[social  organizations  fire  **"*'* tivp  **nd  mimndigi ; 
"  s  is  a  preventive  and  an  antidote.  They  come 
tbTieal  diseases  and  wounds;  this,  to  make  the 
physical  and  moral  frame  invulnerable  to  them. 
Let  the  common  school  be  expanded  to  its  capa- 
bilities,  let  it  be  worked  with  the  efficiency  of 
which  it  is  susceptible,  and  nine-tenths  of  the 
rimes  in  the  penal  code  will  become  obsolete;  the 
long  catalogue  of  human  ills  will  be  abridged; 
men  will  walk  more  safely  by  day;  every  pillow 
will  be  more  inviolable  by  night;  property,  life 
and  character  will  be  held  by  a  stronger  tenure; 
all  rational  hopes  respecting  the  future  wrill  be 
brightened." 

But  Mr.  Mann's  confidence  in  the  Legislature's 
disapproval  of  the  opposition  was  not  well  placed, 
for  a  minority  of  the  Committee  on  Education 


THE    EDUCATOR.  39 

promptly  reported  a  bill  to  transfer  the  powers 
and  duties  of  the  Board  of  Education  to  the  gov- 
ernor and  council,  and  the  duties  of  the  secretary 
to  the  secretary  of  state.  This  movement  was 
attributed  with  some  justice  to  the  radical  evan- 
gelical members  of  the  Legislature  and  caused 
Mr.  Mann  no  little  anxiety,  for  the  plea  of  economy 
was  very  popular  that  year.  The  vote  on  the 
measure  was  postponed  from  time  to  time  through 
the  wrhole  session,  so  that  there  was  no  peace  for 
the  secretary,  and  he  had  little  time  or  strength 
to  give  to  the  legitimate  work  of  the  office.  When 
it  did  come  to  a  vote,  the  opposition  chose  an  hour 
when  everything  was  to  its  advantage,  but  even 
then  the  board  was  sustained  by  a  vote  of  131  to 
114.  Of  this  Mr.  Mann  wrote  to  a  friend:  ''Never 
was  any  question  taken  under  circumstances  more 
disadvantageous  to  the  prevailing  party,  and  1 
am  inclined  to  think  that  it  will  be  considered,  in 
flash  language,  a  settler." 

The  next  year,  1842,  the  opposition  made  no 
demonstration  in  the  Legislature  and  the  feeling 
was  very  strong  towards  the  board  and  its  meas- 
ures. Mr.  Mann  secured  an  appropriation  of 
$6,000  a  year  for  three  years  for  the  normal 
schools  and  $15  for  each  school  district  in  the 
state  for  a  school  library,  on  condition  of  its  rais- 
ing a  like  amount.  These  annual  legislative  afflic- 
tions were  more  venomous  and  terrific  than  one 
in  this  day  can  appreciate.  Religious  opposition 
to  Mr.  Maun  and  his  work  walTTery  keen;  the 
anti-temperance  sentiment  was  ever  on  the  alert 
to  discomfort  him,  the  proslavery  forces  were 
always  against  him,  and  all  phases  of  conserva- 
tism made  him  a  target.  Combined  with  all  these 
was  a  bitter  opposition  from  the  teachers  and  the 
ever  ready  plea  for  economy.  Mr.  Mann  met  every 
issue  and  every  foe  and  won  in  every  conflict  He 
had  more  medals  of  victory  than  ever  came  to  any 


40  HORACE     MANN. 

other  educator.  What  Patrick  Henry  was  in 
1765,  Sam  Adams  in  1775  and  Abraham  Lincoln 
in  1856-60,  Horace  Mann  was  in  1840-47.  Men 
are  raised  up  for  special  work  and  no  man  ever 
came  to  the  kingdom  in  better  time  than  Horace 
Mann,  the  educator. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Mlt.     MANN'S    UK  TOUTS. 

To  his  annual  reports  Mr.  Mann  gave  his  best  I 
thought.     There  have  been  no  such  official  educa-/ 
tional  documents  prepared  in  any  country.     The 
later  reports  of  the  Massachusetts  board,  its  secre- 
tary and  agents  have  often  been  of  inestimable 
value.     Superintendent  W.  T.  Harris  of  St.  Louis, 
Superintendent  Henry    F.  Harrington    of    New 
Bedford,    Superintendent    George    Howland    of 
Chicago,  and   others,    issued    great    reports   but 
there  has  been  nothing  to   compare  with  these 
twelve  reports  of  Mr.  Mann.  The  state  of  New  York  ! 
reprinted  one  of  them  entire,  distributing  18,000- 
copies  gratis  through  the  state.     At -least  one  of  _ 
them  was  republished  entire  at  public  expense  in 
England  and  one  at  least  was  translated  and  re- 

published  entire  at   government  expense  in  Ger- 

many.     Parliament  invited  him  to  enlarge  upon 
that  department  of  his  seventh  report  which  re-  * 
ferred  to  the  schools  of  Great  Britain  and  re-J 
printed  it  as  a  government  document. 

Many  of  his  public  addresses  were  printed  and 
extensively  circulated.  His  address  before  the 
American  Institute  of  Instruction  at  New  Bed- 
ford, August,  1842,  was  specially  published  in  an 
edition  of  20,000  for  free  distribution.  There 
has  never  been  anything  to  compare  with  the 
volume  of  his  writing,  its  freshness  and  vigor,  its 
practical  and  philosophical  wisdom.  At  this  day 
it  is  a  better  education  to  read  his  twelve  reports, 
his  speeches  and  his  controversies  than  the  writ- 
ings of  any  ten  men  aside  from  Henry  Barnard 


42  HORACE     MA\\\ 

and  W.  T.  Harris.  His  first  annual  report  (1837) 
must  have  been  a  revelation  in  that  day  as  it  is 
without  a  peer  even  to  this  day.  He  said:  "The 
object  Of  the  common  school  system  Ts  "to  give  to 
every "cnTIcTa  free,  straight,  solid  pathway,  by 
which  he  can  walk  directly  up  from  the  ignorance 
of  an  infant  to  a  knowledge  of  the  primary  duties 
of  a  man."  He  devotes  the  report  to  an  exhaust- 
ive, scholarly,  mighty  treatment  of  these  ques- 
tions: The  situation,  construction,  condition  and 
number  of  schoolhouses;  the  manner  in  which 
school  committee-men  discharge  their  duties;  the 
interest  felt  by  the  community  in  the  education  of 
all  its  children;  the  position  in  which  a  certain 
portion  of  the  community  stands  in  relation  to 
free  schools;  the  competency  of  teachers.  Upon 
each  of  these  he  enlarged  with  much  brilliancy, 
discussing  every  phase  of  these  questions. 
—  His  argument  for  expert  supervision  was  as 
skilful  and  vigorous  as  anything  uttered  in  later 
times:  "The  state  employs  in  the  common  schools 
fore  than  three  thousand  teachers  at  an  expense 
of  more  than  $465,000  raised  by  direct  taxation. 
But  they  have  not  one-thousandth  part  of  the 
supervision  which  watches  the  same  number  of 
persons  having  the  care  of  cattle,  spindles  or  of 
the  retail  of  shop  goods.  Who  would  retain  his 
reputation  for  sanity,  if  he  employed  men  on 
his  farm,  or  in  his  factory  month  after  month  with- 
out oversight  and  even  without  inquiry."  In  this 
tone  he  sweeps  on  from  point  to  point  with  jnar- 
velous  powrer. 

second  annual  report  (1838)  was  largely 
an  arraignment  of  the  educational  means  and 
methods  as  he  found  them.  The  first  had  treated 
of  ideals  and  their  atiair.inriit  as  applied  to  edu- 
cation in  the  state.  In  tjie  second  lie  showed  that 
"the  common  school  system  of  Massachusetts  had 
fallen  into  a  state  of  general  unsoundness  and  de- 


THE     EDUCATOR.  4;' 

V  / 

bility."  The  schoolhouses  were  ill  adapted  to  en- 
courage mental  effort  and  absolutely  perilous  to 
the  health  of  children;  the  schools  were  under 
sleepy  supervision;  many  of  the  most  intelligent 
and  wealthy  citizens  Jiad  become  estranged  from 
their  welfare,  and  the  teachers,  although,  with  very 
few  exceptions,  persons,  of  estimable  character 
and  of  great  private  worth,  yet  in  the  absence  of 
all  opportunity  to  qualify  themselves  for  the  per- 
formance of  the  most  difficult  and  delicate  task 
committed  to  human  hands,  were  deeply  and  widely 
deficient  in  a  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  as  the 
subject  of  improvement  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
means  best  adapted  wisely  to  unfold  and  direct 
its  growing  faculties.  "To  expect  that  a  system 
animated  only  by  a  feeble  principle  of  life,  and 
that  life  of  irregular  action,  could  be  restored  at 
once  to  health  and  vigor,  would  be  a  sure  prepara- 
tion for  disappointment/' 

There  has  never  been  a  more  close,  scientific 
study  of  the  actual  conditions  than  those  which 
led  to  the  publication  of  this  second  report.  This 
analytic  study  is;  supplemented  by  a  remarkable 
presentation  of  pedagogical  principles.  He  shows 
that  in  learning  the  effective  labor  must  be  per- 
formed by  the  learner  himself  and  generally  this 
must  be  a  conscious  effort  on  the  part  of  the  pupil, 
who  must  not  be  a  passive  recipient  but  an  active^ 
voluntary  agent.  He  muWjSGnore  than  admit 
or  welcome,  he  must  reach  out,  and  grasp,  and 
bring  home.  The  teacher  must  bring  knowledge 
within  arm's  length  of  the  learner;  must  break 
down  its  masses  into  portions  so  minute,  that  they 
can  be  taken  up  and  appropriated  one  by  one,  but 
the  final"  appropriating  act  must  be  learner's. 
Knowledge  is  not  annexed  to  the  mind  but  the  mind 
assimilates  it  by  its  own  vital  powers.  Each  must 
earn  his  own  knowledge  by  the  labor  of  his  own 
brain.  Nature  recognizes  no  title  to  learning  bv 


44  HORACE     MANN, 

inheritance,  gift  or  finding.  Development  of  mind 
is  by  growth  and  organization.  All  effective 
teaching  must  have  reference  to  this  indispensa- 
ble, consummating  act  and  effort  of  the- learner. 
Every  scholar  in  the  school  must  think  with  his 
own  mind  as  every  singer  in  the  choir  must  sing 
with  her  own  voice.  The  first  requisite  is  the 
existence  in  the  mind  of  a  desire  to  learn.  Children 
who  spend  six. months  in  learning  the  alphabet 
will,  on  the  playground  in  a  single  half-day  or 
moonlight  evening,  learn  the  intricacies  of  a  game 
or  sport, — where  to  stand,  where  to  run,  what  to 
say,  how  to  count,  and  what  are  the  laws  and  the 
ethics  of  the  game;  the  whole  requiring  more  in- 
tellectual effort  than  would  suffice  to  learn  half  a 
dozen  alphabets.  So  of  the  recitation  of  verses, 
mingled  with  action, and  of  juvenile  games,  played 
in  the  chimney  corner.  And  the  reason  is,  thai 
for  the  one,  there  is  desire:  while  against  the 
other,  there  is  repugnance.  The  teacher,  in  one 
case,  is  rolling  weight  up  hill,  in  the  other  down; 
for  gravitation  is  not  more  to  the  motions  of  a 
'heavy  body  than  desire  is  to  the  efficiency  of  the 
intellect.  Until  a  desire  to  learn  exists  within 
the  child,  some  foreign  force  must  constantly  be 
•supplied  to  keep  him  going:  but  from  the  moment 
that  a  desire  is  excited,  he  is  self-motive  and  goes 
ill  one. 

As  is  often  the  case,  the  multitude  of  virtues 
in  this  report  made  much  less  impression  than  the 
few  stinging  sentences,  as  "sleepy  supervision," 
"a  state  of  general  unsoundness  and  debility," 
"animated  only  by  a  feeble  principle  of  life  and 
that  life  in  irregular  action."  The  wide  world 
over  his  great  utterances  were  appreciated  but 
at  home  the  few  sharp  expressions  rankled  and 
were  never  forgotten  by  the  leading  teachers. 

The  third  annual  report  (1839)  dealt  with  the 
people  and  their  responsibility  for  the  improve- 


THE    EDUCATOR.  45 

ment  of  the  schools.  It  also  dwelt  upon  the  ne- 
cessity of  public  libraries  for  the  general  intelli- 
gence and  upon  universal  and  ever  enlarging  edu- 
cational opportunities.  The  characteristic 
hire  of  Mr.  Mann's  reports  is  the  way  in  which  he 
grapples  with  one  or  two  subjects  and  treats  them  | 
with  the  mastery  of  a  statesman.  'In  this  third 
report  he  shifts  the  responsibility  largely  from 
the  teacher  to  the  community,  to  public  senti- 
ment, to  liberality  of  support,  to  loyalty  to  the 
highest  good  in  locating  school  buildings,  choos^j 
ing  and  retaining  teachers.  His  treatment  of  tin- 
factory  question  in  relation  to  attendance  should 
be  reprinted  and  circulated  in  the  factory  towns 
all  over  the  land. 

After  portraying  the  educational  effect  of  hav- 
ing ;i  child  become  a  part  of  a  machine  by  the 
regularity  of  his  movements  according  .to  orders 
in  a  factory,  he  draws  this  terrible  indictment  of 
the  system. 

"The  ordinary  movements  of  society  may  go 
on  without  any  shocks  or  collisions;  as,  in  the  hu- 
man system,  a  disease  may  work  at  the  vitals, 
and  gain  a  fatal  ascendancy  there,  before  it  mani- 
fests itself  on  the  surface.  But  the  punishment 
for  such  an  offence  will  not  be  remitted  because 
its  infliction  is  postponed.  The  retribution,  in- 
deed, is  not  postponed,  it  only  awaits  the  full 
completion  of  the  offence;  for  this  is  a  crime  of 
such  magnitude,  that  it  requires  years  for  tin* 
criminal  to  perpetrate  it  in,  and  to  finish  it  off 
Thoroughly  in  all  its  parts.  But  when  the  children 
pass  from  the  conditions  of  restraint  to  that  of 
freedom,  from  years  of  enforced  but  impatient 
servitude  to  that  independence  for  which  they 
have  secretly  pined, and  to  which  they  have  looked 
forward,  not  merely  as  the  period  of  emancipa- 
tion, but  of  long-delayed  indulgence;  when  they 
become  strong  in  the  passions  and  propensities 

^X. 


4<;  HORACE     .1/.1A.Y, 

that  grow  up  spontaneously,  but  are  weak  in  the 
moral  powers  that  control  them,  and  blind  in  the 
intellect  which  foresees  their  tendencies;  when, 
according  to  the  course  of  our  political  institu- 
tions, they  go,  by  one  bound,  from  the  political 
nothingness  of  •  a  child  to  the  political  sover- 
eignty of  a  mail, — then,  for  that  people  who 
so  cruelly  neglected  and  injured  them,  there  will 
assuredly  come  a  day  of  retribution." 

The  public  libraries  of  Massachusetts  are  her 
pride  as  they  are  the  wonder  and  admiration  of 
ilie  world,  and  for  them  we  are  largely  indebted 
to  this  third  annual  report  of  Mr.  Mann.  I)or  all 
true,  wise  advocates  of  public  libraries  will  turn 
to  this  "treasure-house  of  argument  for  their 'in- 
spiration. 

The  fourth  annual  report  grappled  with  the 
great  educational  vice  of  tlie  century  following 
the  Revolution,  the  local  school  distrfct,N which 
George  H.  Martin  has  so  aptly  characterized  as 
"the  high-water  mark  of  modern  democracy  and 
the  low-water  mark  of  the  Massachusetts  school 
system."  Mr.  Mann  attempted  to  remedy  this 
by  the  union  of  districts.  It  is  in  this  fourth  re- 
port that  he  deals  with  greatest  vigor  with  the 
problems  presented  by  the  normal  schools. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  at  this  time,  when  the 
universities,  are  very  generally  succeeding  in  the 
introduction  into  the  grammar  schools  of  "uni- 
versity studies,"  and  demanding  "university 
flavor"  for  the  normal  schools,  that  Mr.  Mann 
always  felt  that  one  of  the  great  victories  of  his 
educational  career  was  the  exclusion  of  preten- 
sion to  scholarship  and  the  accomplishment  of 
thoroughness  in  the  branches  a  knowledge  of 
which  was  fundamental. 

"At  the  normal  school  at  Barre  during  the  last 
term,  the  number  of  pupils  was  about  fifty.  This 
number  might  have  been  doubled  if  the  visitors 


THE     EDL'CATOIf.  47 

would  have  consented  to  carry  the  applicants 
forward  at  once  into  algebra  and  chemistry  and 
geometry  and  astronomy,  instead  of  subjecting 
them  to  a  thorough  review  of  common-school 
studies.  One  of  the  most  cheering  auguries  in 
regard  to  our  schools  is  the  unanimity  with  which 
the  committees  have  awarded  sentence  of  con- 
demnation against  the  practice  of  introducing 
into  them  the  studies  of  the  university  to  the  ex- 
clusion or  neglect  of  the  rudimental  branches. 
By  such  a  practice  a  pupil  foregoes  all  the  stock 
of  real  knowledge  he  might  otherwise  acquire  ;|v 
and  he  receives  in  its  stead  only  a  show  or  coun- 
terfeit of  knowledge,  which,  with  all  intelligent 
persons,  only  renders  his  ignorance  more  con-.  ^ 
spicuous.  A  child's  limbs  are  as  well  fitted  in  <S 
point  of  strength  to  play  with  the  planets  before 
he  can  toss  a  ball,  as  his  mind  is  to  get  any  con- 
ception of  the  laws  which  govern  their  stupendous 
motions  before  he  is  master  of  common  arithme- 
tic. For  these  and  similar  considerations,  it 
seems  that  the  first  intellectual  qualification  of  a 
teacher  is  a  critical  thoroughness,  both  in  rules 
and  principles,  in  regard  to  all  the  branches  re- 
quired by  law  to  be  taught  in  the  common  schools; 
and  a  power  of  recalling  them  in  any  of  their  parts 
with  a  promptitude  and  certainty  hardly  inferior 
to  that  with  which  he  could  tell  his  own  name." 

This  fourth  report  may  be  characterized  as  /. 
high-water  mark  in  the  practical  treatment  of  1 1 
every-day  questions  connected  with  education.  Ill 

The  fifth  annual  report  was  the  first  to  create 
a  sensation  the  world  over.  There  had  been  a, 
growing  reverence  for  the  man  throughout  Ameri- 
ca and  in  foreign  parts  but  it  was  this  fifth  report 
(1841)  that  was  printed  at  public  expense  and  dis- 
tributed by  the  tens  of  thousand  copies  by  the 
New  York  legislature,  by  British  authorities,  and 
by  the  German  government.  Tt  is  a  glorious 


48  UORM't:     A1A.\\, 

presentation  of  the  effect  of  education  upon  the 
worldly  fortunes  of  men, — upon  property,  upon 
human  comfort  and  competence,  upon  the  out- 
ward, visible,  material  interests  or  well-being  of 
individuals  and  communities.  He  showed  that 
the  aggregate  wealth  of  a  town  will  be  increased 
just  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  its  appropria- 
tions for  schools;  tax  for  schools  is  an  in  vest  UK-HI 
and  not  a  burden;  money  invested  in  the  educa- 
tion of  a  child  will  more  than  double  his  patri- 
mony. Education  ministers  to  our  personal  and 
material  wants  beyond  all  other  agencies,  whether 
excellence  of  climate,  spontaneity  of  production, 
mineral  resources,  or  mines  of  silver  and  gold. 

He  shows  the  difference  in  productive  ability 
between  the  educated  and  the  uneducated,  "be- 
tween a  man  or  woman  whose  mind  has  been 
awakened  to  thought  and  supplied  with  the  rudi- 
ments of  knowledge  by  a  good  common-school 
education  and  one  whose  faculties  have  never 
been  developed,  or  aided  in  emerging  from  their 
original  darkness  and  torpor,  by  such  a  privilege." 
The  effect  of  this  report  was  not  to  glorify  the 
material  aspect  for  he  says:  "This  tribute  is  still 
the  faintest  note  of  praise  that  can  be  uttered  in 
honor  of  so  noble  a  theme;  and  however  deserv- 
ing of  attention  may  be  the  economical  view 
of  the  subject  yet  it  is  one  that  dwindles  into  in- 

I  significance  when  compared  with  these  loftier  and 
more  sacred  attributes  of  the  cause  which  have 

'•'.  the  power  of  converting  material  wealth  intQ  spir- 
itual well-being,  and  of  giving  to  its  possessor 
lordship  and  sovereignty  alike  over  the  tempta- 
tions of  adversity,  and  the  still  more  dangerous 
fceducemerits  of  prosperity,  and  which — so  far  as 
human  agency  is  concerned — must  be  looked  to 
'for  the  establishment  of  peace  and  righteousness 
upon  earth,  and  for  the  enjoyment  of  glory  and 
happiness  in  heaven." 


THE    EDUCATOR.  49 

The  sixth  annual  report  (1842)  attracted  com- 
paratively  little  attention  dealing  as  it  did  largely 
with  the  question  of  teaching  jji^sipjogy  in 
scJUools.  Mr.  Mann  was  very  generally  suspected 
of  coming  dangerously  near  being  aj^crank,"  and 
his  work  had  been  hindered  in  many  important 
phases  by  this  malarial  suspicion.  vHe  was  radi 
cal  on  the  temperance  question^!  was  an  intense 
enthusiast  over  the  insane,  the  <Jeaf,  dumb  and 
JWind,  and  was  withal  an  ardent  champion  of 
phrenology.  These  facts,  taken  as  a  whole,  led 
the  great  body  of  the  people  to  fear  that  sooner 
or  later  he  would  go  off  at  a  tangent,  so  that  when 
this  sixth  report  appeared,  one  of  the  longest  he 
had  written,  devoted  largely  to  physiology  they 
accepted  without  hesitation  the  general  judgment 
that  the  expected  had  happened.  For  six  years 
he  had  had  many  very  bitter^omxments,  but  the 
more  influential  among  them*  mul  nursed  their 
wrath  in  silence.  There  had  been  an  element  of 
devotion  and  of  grandeur  in  the  first  five  reports 
that  led  such  men  to  say  uthe  hour  has  not  struck'1 
for  us  to  speak.  This  sixth  report  came  also  at  a 
time,  when  public  impatience  witli  phrenology 
was  quite  distinct  so  that  the  appearance  of  this 
report  marked  the  moment  of  misfortune  for  Mr. 
Mann.  He  had  done  the  wrong  thing  at  the 
wrong  time  and  no  one  realized  this  more  than  he. 
These  conditions  must  be  taken  into  account  ;ti 
estimating  the  great  controversy  with  the  ''Thirty- 
one  Boston  Masters"  which  followed.  MrTHaiin 
thought  he  was  doing  the  best  thing  possible  to 
right  his  craft  when  he  married  and  went  abroad 
for  several  months.  The  former  act  was  a  bless- 
ing for  which  he  never  ceased  to  be  thankful,  but 
the  trip  abroad  was  the  beginning  of  fateful  com- 
plications. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  FAMOUS  SEVENTH  REPORT. 

A  sad  chapter  in  Mr.  Mann's  life  is  that  which 
deals  with  his  controversy  with  the  thirty-one 
Boston  masters.  Had  he  died  with  the  issuance 
of  his  fifth  annual  report  he  would  have  been 
glorified  in  death  as  at  no  other  hour  of  his  life. 
,Had  he  "passed  away"  when  he  sailed  for  Europe, 
there  would  have  been  a  host  of  good  people  in 
Massachusetts  to  say:  "Well,  he  dies  at  a  good 
time."  But  his  permanent  place  in  educational 
history  is  due  to  the  great  controversy  with  the 
Boston  masters  more  than  to  all  other  experiences 
of  his  life.  In  its  humiliation  which  was  great, 
appeared  his  ultimate  power.  There  was  never  a 
better  illustration  of  the  truth  that  emergencies 
make  men. 

His  fifth  report  was  the  climax. of  his  growing 
power:  its  reception  by  all  peoples  of  both  hemi- 
spheres threw  him  off  his  guard.  He  was  physi- 
cally worn  out  and  mentally  exhausted.  The 
highest  aspirations  of  his  professional  life  seemed 
about  to  be  realized  and  he  wrote  this  report  on 
physiology,  which,  though  a  great  document  in 
itself,  came  as  an  anti-climax  to  an  expectant  peo- 
ple. 

From  the  first  his  standard  had  been  the 
Prussian  schools  which  had  in  twenty  years  at- 
tained ideal  conditions.  consequently  when  lie 
went  abroad  he  studied  those  schools  as  a  wor- 
shipper. He  was  lionized  everywhere  in  Scot- 
land, England,  Ireland,  Germany,  Saxony,  Hol- 
land, Belgium,  France  and  Prussia.  His  fifth 


THE     UDUUATOK.  51 

report  met  him  in  every  land  and  he  returned  with 
renewed  physical  and  mental  vigor,  with  higher 
aspirations,  and  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  he 
was  no  longer  merely  the  secretary  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts State  Board  of  Education,  but  an  inter- 
national educational  leader.  He  wrote  his  famous 
seventh  annual  report  (184:J)  with  every  condition 
favorable  for  the  highest  flights  but  equally  so  for 
occasional  descents.  No  man  ever  had  occasion 
to  expect  more  from  any  official  utterance  than 
Mr.  Mann  from  this  report,  both  hemispheres 
were  awaiting  it  and  he  had  every  reason  to 
anticipate  a  chorus  of  praise. 

This  seventh  report  was  almost  exclusively  coi 
cerned  with  what  he  saw  abroad.  Read  in  the"* 
light  of  modern  times  when  criticism  is  freely  in- 
dulged in,  one  cannot  understand  why  any  special 
exception  should  have  been  taken  to  this  report 
in  which  he  said:  k'I  have  visited  countries  where 
there  is  no  national  system  of  education,  .and 
countries  where  the  minutest  details  x>f  -the 
schools  are  regulated  by  law.  I  have  seen  schools 
in  which  each  word  and  process,  in  many  lessons, 
was  almost  overloaded  with  explanations  and 
commentary;  and  many  schools  in  which  four  or 
five  hundred  children  were  obliged  to  commit  to 
memory  in  the  Latin  language,  the  entire  book  of 
Psalms  and  other  parts  of  the  Bible,  neither 
teachers  nor  children  understanding  a  word  of 
the  language  which  they  were  prating.  I  have 
seen  countries  in  whose  schools  all  forms  of  cor- 
poral punishment  were  used  without  stint  or 
'measure;  and  I  have  visited  one  nation  in  whose 
excellent  and  well-ordered  schools  scarcely  a  blow 
has  been  struck  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury.  On  reflection,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  would 
be  most  strange  if,  from  all  this  variety  of  system 
and  of  no  system,  of  sound  instruction  and  of 
babbling,  of  the  discipline  of  violence  and  of 


52  HORACJ;   j/.i.v.y, 

moral  means,  many  beneficial  hints  for  our  warn- 
ing or  onr  imitation  could  not  be  derived." 

To  a  reader  of  our  day,  he  appears  to  have 
written  in  the  best  of  spirit,  though  he  says:  "I 
do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  there  are  many  things 
abroad  which  we,  at  home,  should  do  well  to  imi- 
tate: things,  some  of  which  are  here,  as  yet,  mere 
matters  of  speculation  and  theory,  but  which, 
there,  have  long  been  in  operation,  and  are  now 
producing  a  harvest  of  rich  and  abundant  bless- 
ings. If  the  Prussian  schoolmaster  has  better 
methods  of  teaching  reading,  writing,  grammar, 
geography,  arithmetic,  etc.,  so  that,  in  half  the 
time,  he  produces  greater  and  better  results^ 
surely  we  may  copy  his  modes  of  teaching  these 
elements,  without  adopting  his  notions  of  passive 
obedience  to  government,  or  of  blind  adherence 
to  the  articles  of  a  church.  By  the  ordinance  of 
nature,  the  human  faculties  are  substantially  the 
same  all  over  the  world;  and  hence  the  best  means 
for  their  development  and  growth  in  one  plan* 
must  be  substantially  the  best  for  their  deA^elop- 
ment  and  growth  everywhere.  The  spirit  which 
shall  control  the  action  of  these  faculties  when 
matured,  which  shall  train  them  to  self-reliance 
or  to  abject  submission,  which  shall  lead  them  to 
refer  all  questions  to  the  standard  of  reason,  or 
to  that  of  authority, — this  spirit  is  wholly*  dis- 
tinct and  distinguishable  from  the  manner  in 
which  the  faculties  themselves  should  be  trained; 
and  we  may  avail  ourselves  of  all  improved  meth- 
ods in  the  earlier  processes,  without  being  con- 
taminated by  the  abuses  which  may  be  made  to 
follow  them.  The  best  style  of  teaching  arith- 
metic or  spelling  has  no  necessary  or  natural  con- 
nection with  the  doctrine  of  hereditary  right;  and 
an  accomplished  lesson  in  geography  or  grammar 
commits  the  human  intellect  to  no  particular  dog- 
ma i 


THE     EDUCATOR.  53 

"A  generous  and  impartial  mind  does  not  ask 
whence  a  thing  conies,  but  rather  'what  is  it?' 
Those  who  at  the  present  day,  would  reject  an 
improvement  because  of  the  place  of  its  origin, 
belong  to. the  same  school  of  bigotry  with  those 
who  inquired  if  any  good  could  come  out  of  Naza- 
reth; and  what  infinite  blessings  would  the  world 
have  lost  had  that  party  been  punished  by  suc- 
cess! Throughout  my  whole  tour,  no  one  prin- 
ciple has  been  more  frequently  exemplified  than 
this — that'wherever  I  have  found  the  best  institu- 
tions,— educational,  reformatory,  charitable,  pe- 
nal or  otherwise, — there  I  have  always  found  the 
greatest  desire  to  know  how  similar  institutions 
were  administered  among  ourselves;  and  where 
I  have  found  the  worst,  there  I  have  found  most 
of  .the  spirit  of  self-complacency,  and  even  an 
offensive  disinclination  to  hear  of  better 
methods." 

He  takes  occasion  to  speak  with  exuberant 
praise  of  the  work  done  by  his  friend,  Dr.  S.  G. 
Howe  in  the  Institution  for  the  Blind.  He  gives 
an  elaborate  transcript  of  the  lesson  he  heard 
taught  in  a  Scotch  school,  but  his  greatest  enthu- 
siasm is  manifest  in  his  description  of  work  in  the 
Prussian  schools,  emphasizing  their  methods  of 
teaching  reading.  Referring  to  these  schools,  he 
says  that  he  is  persuaded  that  no  thorough  reform 
will  be  effected  in  Massachusetts  schools  till  the 
practice^  of  beginning  with  the  alphabet  is  abol- 
ished, and  says  when  he  inquired  in  Prussia  if 
they  began  with  the  names  of  the  letters  as  given 
in  the  alphabet,  the  look  they  gave  him  implied 
no  great  respect  for  his  professional  intelligence. 
He  devotes  several  pages  to  Sidiculmg  the  alpha- 
bet method.  He  thus  considers  each  of  the  ele- 
mentary school  subjects. 

This  report  appeared  in  the  spring  and  was 
immediatelv  construed  bv  the  Boston  masters  as 


54  HORACE    MANN. 

a  reflection  upon  their  methods.  The  first  recep 
tion  of  the  report  was  the  most  enthusiastic  given 
to  any  of  his  publications,  but  the  private  criti- 
cism greatly  annoyed  him,  and  he  wrote,  as  early 
as  April,  "There  are  owls  who  to  adapt  the  world 
to  their  own  eyes  would  always  keep  the  sun  from 
rising.  Most  teachers  amongst  us  have  been  ani- 
mated to  greater  exertions  by  the  account  of  the 
best  schools  abroad.  Others  are  offended  at  bein«i 
driven  out  of  the  paradise  which  their  own  self- 
esteem  had  erected  for  them."  The  first  open  at- 
tack was  through  the  columns  of  a  religious 
paper.  These  attacks  became  very  virulent  and 
Mr.  Mann  replied;  but  in  publishing  his  reply  the 
editor  made  some  "weak  and  wicked"  comments, 
to  wlii oh  he  also  replied.  This  reply  was  not  pub- 
lished in  that  paper  but  printed  elsewhere,  and 
a  lively  newspaper  controversy  followed. 


CHAPTER    X. 

"REMARKS"    OF    THE    MASTERS. 

Through  the  spring  and  summer,  in  nearly  every 
educational  convention  held  throughout  the  state, 
some  of  the  grammar  masters  of  Boston,  Worces- 
ter and  other  cities  were  sure  to  be  upon  the  pro- 
gram and  always  with  an  attack  on  the  ideas 
presented  by  Mr.  Mann  in  his  seventh  annual 
report.  But  all  this,  though  annoying,  was  unin- 
portant  in  comparison  with  "The  Remarks  on  the 
Seventh  Annual  Report  of  the  Hon.  Horace 
Mann,"  a  document  of  144  pages  issued  by  the 
thirty-one  Boston  masters.  These  "Remarks" 
were  prepared  by  four  different  members  of  the 
Masters'  Association,  each  section  read  before 
that  body,  and  then  published  in  the  hope  that 
they  might  "help  in  some  degree  to  correct  erro- 
neous views  and  impressions,  and  thus  tend  to 
promote  a  healthy  tone  in  public  sentiment  in 
relation  to  many  things  connected  with  the  wel- 
fare of  our  common  schools."  "The  teacher,  who 
has  stood  for  many  years,  himself  against  a  host 
of  five  or  six  hundred  children  from  all  ranks  and 
conditions  of  society,  thinks  he  may  once1  ask  a 
hearing  before  the  public.  We  know  that  liter- 
ary and  moral  amateurs  seem  very  often  to  repu- 
diate the  notion,  that  'experience  is  the  best 
schoolmaster.'  We  would  not  less  eschew  impa- 
tience with  such  and  the  great  community,  than 
with  the  children  of  our  charge.  We  desire  no 
assent  to  anything  which  is  not  right  and  reasona- 
ble; but  being  of  one  mind  in  regard  to  great 


vr)(;  HORACE    Jf/LY.V, 

cardinal  principles,  we  shall  once,  at  least,  ven- 
-tnre  'abroad'  in  their  defence." 

The  thirty-one  masters  who  signed  this  docu- 
ment were:  Barnum  Field,  Franklin  School;  Jos- 
eph Hale,  Johnson  School ;  Samuel  S.  Greene,  New 
North  School;  Cornelius  Walker,  Wells  School; 
William  D.  Swan,  Mayhew  School;  William  A. 
Shepard,  Brimmer  School;  A.  Andrews,  Bowdoin 
School;  James  Robinson,  Bowdoin  School;  Wil- 
liam J.  Adams,  Hancock  School;  Peter  Mackin- 
tosh, Jr.; Hancock  School;  Samuel  Barrett,  Adams 
School;  Josiah  Fairbank,  Adams  School;  C.  B. 
Sherman,  Eliot  School;  Levi  Conant, Eliot  School; 
Aaron  J).  Capen,  Mayhew  School;  Frederick 
(YaHs,  llawes  School;  John  Alex.  Harris,  Hawes 
School;  Abner  Forbes,  Smith  School;  Albert 
Bowker,  Lyman  School;  Nathan  Merrill,  Franklin 
School;  Reuben  Swan,  Jr.,  Wells  School;  George 
Allen.  Jr.,  Endicott  School;  Loring  Lathrop,  Endi- 
cott  School;  Henry  Williams,  Jr.,  Winthrop 
.School;  Samuel  L.  Gould,  Winthrop  School; 
Thomas  Baker,  Boylston  School;  Charles  Kim- 
ball,  Boylston  School ;  Joshua  Bates,  Jr.,  Brimmer 
School;  Benj.  Drew,  Jr.,  New  North  School; 
.).  A.  Stearns,  Mather  School;  Jona.  Matties,  Jr., 
Mather  School. 

These  "Remarks"  were  as  brilliant  productions 
as  ever  came  from  the  pens  of  grammar  masters!, 
Six  months,  practically,  had  been  spent  in  the 
preparation.  Of  course  there  is  much  which  now 
1  seems  too  ridiculous  to  have  been  written  with 
seriousness  which  then  passed  for  brilliant  ap- 
peals to  the  convictions  and  prejudices  of  the 
people.  The  masters  make  a  strong  presenta- 
tion of  the  virtues  of  the  "Puritan  fathers  who 
founded  a  university  in  ten  years  after  they 
landed  upon  New  England's  rude  and  rocky 
shore,"  and  established  the  common  schools — "to 
whose  influence  the  present  generation  is  in- 


THE     EDUCATOR.  57 

debted  for  most  of  the  civic,  social  and  religious 
blessings";  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the. 
great  leaders  of  two  hundred  years  could  boast 
no  higher  alrna  mater  than  the  rude  room  of  some 
humble  house  in  which  they  gathered  a  few  weeks 
each  season;  and  seem  to  apologize  for  the 
teachers  "who  have  left  behind  them  monuments 
which  should  exact  feelings  of  gratitude  rather 
than  produce  dissatisfaction." 

"With  all  the  rude  fixtures  and  other  inconven- 
iences for  school  purposes,  an  enlightened  public- 
sentiment  was  early  formed,  which  sustained  the 
State  Legislature  in  giving  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  to  the  colleges  and  other  seminaries  of 
learning.  After  making  allowance  for  the  social 
evils  of  war  and  intemperance,  the  progress  of 
education  to  the  present  time  seems  truly  wonder- 
ful. The  good  cause  was  never  more  prosper- 
ous than  at  the  time  the  Board  of  Education  was 
formed,  and  the  establishment  of  such  a  body, 
with  little  or  no  opposition,  certainly  indicated  u 
healthy  tone  in  public  sentiment.  All  the  friends 
of  the  common  schools  from  the  governor  to  the 
most  humble  citizen,  felt  a  desire  to  see  these 
institutions  improved,  and  their  blessings  ex- 
tended to  every  child  in  the  commonwealth.  The 
desire  was  for  improvement,  and  not  for  revolu 
tion,  in  that  'ancient  and  cherished  institution,  the 
common  schools  of  Massachusetts/"  Mr.  Mann 
had  described  a  performance  by  the  blind  on 
organs  unusual  in  this  country,  organs  construc- 
ted with  a  set  of  keys  for  the  feet,  so  that  the  feet 
could  play  an  accompaniment  to  the  hands,  and 
he  is  informed,  sarcastically,  that  there  are  fifty 
such  organs  in  churches  within  sight  of  the  State 
House.  Mr.  Mann  claimed  that  in  six  weeks  he 
visited  hundreds  of  schools  and  saw  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  scholars,  saying  that  he  did  not  merely 
look  at  these  schools  but  that  he  entered  them 


58  HORACE     A/AAA, 

before  the  first  recitation  in  the  morning  and 
remained  until  after  the  last  at  night.  He  is 
reminded  that  in  another  connection  he  speaks 
facetiously  of  the  mathematical  instruction  in 
our  schools  saying,  "If  a  boy  states  that  he  has 
seen  10,000  horses  and  you  make  him  count  10,000 
kernels  of  corn,  he  will  never  see  so  many  horses 
again,"  and  they  suggest  that  if  he  should  count 
the  number  of  school  days  in  six  weeks  he  would 
not  visit  so  many  hundreds  of  schools  or  see  so 
many  tens  of  thousands  of  scholars  in  the  same 
time. 

Mr.  Mann  commends  the  good  conduct  in  the 
Holland  schools  where  they  have  no  corporal 
punishment,  remarking  that  one  pupil  in  100 
is  expelled  for  bad  conduct.  His  attention  is 
called  to  the  fact  that  good  conduct  is  rather  ex- 
pensive according  to  his  own  showing.  . 

"A  sacrilegious  hand  has  been  laid  upon  every- 
thing mental,  literary  and  moral  that  did  not  con- 
form to  the  new  light  of  the  day.  Fulminations 
of  sarcasm  and  ridicule,  from  thejecture  room 
and  the  press,  in  essays  and  speeches,  were  the 
forebodings  of  the  new  era  in  the  history  of 
common  schools,  and  in  the  experience  of  teach- 
ers. After  Washington  had  crossed  the  Dela- 
ware, in  the  darkest  hour  of  the  Revolution, 
Congress  gave  him  new  power,  in  consideration  of 
the  new  work  before  him;  but  it  seemed  that 
before  the  teacher  could  be  allowed  to  go  on  in  his 
great  work  of  warring  against  ignorance,  idleness 
and  vice,  his  authority  should  be  abridged,  and  all 
his  acquired  reputation  and  influence  forfeited, 
as  would  be  the  goods  of  a  contraband  trade. 
All  exaggerated  accounts  of  cases  in  the  school 
discipline  of  some  teachers,  and  the  supposed 
disqualifications  of  others,  seemed  to  be  set  forth 
to  lessen  the  authority,  influence  and  usefulness 
of  teachers,  and  give  a  new  direction  to  public 
sentiment 


THE    EDUCATOR.  59 

•'In  matters  of  education,  how  vain  and  worth 
less  have  been  spasmodic  efforts  and  hot-bed 
theories,  in  which  the  projectors  have  disre- 
garded expense  and  observation!  Of  such  va- 
garies, in  the  first  place,  may  be  mentioned  the 
infant  school  system,  which,  for  a  while  was  the 
lion  of  its  day.  The  fond  parent,  the  philosopher, 
and  the  philanthropist,  were  equally  captivated 
by  the  scintillations  of  infantile  genius.  The 
doting  mother  and  the  credulous  aunt,  with 
rapturous  delight  told  their  friends  of  the  rapid 
progress  of  the  prattling  child;  and  the  learned 
president  of  a  New  England  college,  when  he  heard 
the  little  philosopher  say  that  the  hat,  including 
the  ribbon  and  buckle,  was  composed  of  parts  of 
the  three  kingdoms  of  nature,  the  animal,  vege- 
table and  mineral,  remarked  that  he  then  saw  by 
what  means  the  world  would  be  converted;  and  he 
seemed  to  think  that  in  Geology,  Botany,  and  Zo- 
ology, there  would  be  no  farther  need  of  the 
services  of  Lyell,  Gray  and  Audubon;  but  the 
object  of  live  mental  vision  proved  an  ignis 
fatuus.  The  sister  of  a  distinguished  governor 
said  the  whole  affair  of  infant  schools  reminded 
her  of  those  youthful  days  when  she  planted 
beans  in  the  garden  and  soon  pulled  them  up  to 
see  if  the  roots  had  grown." 

The  normal  schools,  in  their  early  days  afforded 
abundant  opportunity  for  these  critics  to  turn 
against  them  many  of  the  things  that  Mr.  Mann 
had  said  regarding  the  common  school  system. 

Mr.  Mann's  reason  for  going  abroad  was  the 
fact  that  he  had  spent  six  years  and  spared 
neither  labor  nor  expense  in  fulfilling  that  por- 
tion of  the  law  which  requires  that  the  secretary 
shall  collect  information ;  and  for  this  purpose  had 
visited  schools  in  most  of  the  free  states  and  in 
several  of  the  slave  states  of  the  Union,  and  had 
done  all  he  could  to  learn  what  was  being  accom- 


60  HORACE    J/AV.V, 

plished  throughout  this  country.  He  had  turned 
his  eyes  again  and  again  to  some  new  quarter  of 
the  horizon  with  the  hope  that  they  might  be 
greeted  by  a  brighter  beam  of  light. 

"Actual  observation  alone  can  give  anything 
approaching  to  the  true  idea.  I  do  not  exag- 
gerate when  I  say  that  the  most  active  and  lively 
schools  I  have  ever  seen  in  the  United  States 
must  be  regarded  almost  as  dormitories,  if  com- 
pared with  the  fervid  life  of  the  Scotch  schools; 
and,  by  the  side  of  theirs,  our  pupils  would  seem 
to  be  hibernating  animals  just  emerging  from 
their  torpid  state,  and  as  yet  but  half  conscious 
of  the  possession  of  life  and  faculties.  It  is 
certainly  within  bounds  to  say  there  were  six 
times  as  many  questions  put  and  answers  given, 
in  the  same  space  of  time,  as  I  ever  heard  put 
and  given  in  any  school  in  our  own  country." 
,  "Nor  is  this  all.  The  teacher  does  not  stand 
immovably  fixed  to  one  spot  (I  never  saw  a 
teacher  in  Scotland  sitting  in  a  school-room),  nor 
are  the  bodies  of  the  pupils  mere  blocks,  resting 
motionless  in  their  seats,  or  lolling  from  side  to 
side  as  though  life  were  deserting  them." 

Mr.  Mann  is  asked  what  he  knows  of  the  present 
state  of  the  Boston  schools  from  actual  observa- 
tion and  is  told  that  he  knows  comparatively 
nothing  as  he  has  not  in  six  years  visited  a  single 
school  in  the  city  and  knows  nothing  of  them  by 
observation  and  he  makes  hasty  statements  and 
comparisons  upon  matters  abroad  and  at  home. 
For  instance,  he  devotes  a  chapter  to  music  in  the 
Prussian  schools  while  he  never  heard  any  sing- 
ing exercise  in  the  Boston  schools.  It  is  not 
known  to  any  of  the  masters  that  the  secretary 
has  improved  any  opportunity,  within  five  years, 
of  knowing  anything  of  the  views  of  Boston 
teachers  or  anything  of  their  plans  or  the  result 
of  their  instruction.  He  has  not  held  a  meeting 


THE    EDUCATOR.  $± 

in  Boston  for  six  years,  and  it  is  difficult  for  us  to 
understand  how  Mr.  Mann  could  have  collected 
or  diffused  any  information  in  Suffolk  County. 
Many  of  the  thirty-one  masters  were  graduates 
of  colleges  and  universities,  had  had  much  exper- 
ience, frequently  assembling  themselves  together, 
and  had  delivered  addresses  upon  many  educa- 
tional subjects. 

All  in  all,  this  was  a  bright,  strong  document 
with  which  the  thirty-one  masters  might  well  feel 
satisfied,  but  the  times  were  against  them.  Five 
years  before,  this  would  have  been  a  stunning 
blow,  but  the  sentiment  had  changed,  and  though 
they  \vere  congratulated  by  the  fraternity,  it 
rallied  to  the  support  of  Mr.  Mann  multitudes  who 
had  hesitated  hitherto  to  identify  themselves 
with  him.  Though  many  laughed  at  the  sharp 
thrusts  and  the  just  criticisms,  they  ended  by 
sympathizing  with  him,  saying  that  he  would 
be  more  careful  of  his  rhetoric  and  his  figures 
another  time.  Although  it  was  rumored  for 
some  weeks  that  the  Boston  ^masters  were  plan- 
ning a  severe  attack  on  Mr.  Mann  -he  was  taken 
entirely  by  surprise.  He  had  no  suspicion  that 
his  report  was  so  vulnerable  nor  that  the  masters 
were  so  able.  Six  months  of  close  study  were 
given  to  their  work  and  when  it  appeared  it  was 
a  masterpiece.  The  effect  upon  Mr.  Mann  was  all 
and  more  than  his  bitterest  opponent  could  ask. 
It  cut  him  to  the  quick.  Speaking  of  it  to  a  friend 
in  England  he  said  that  he  had  suffered  severely 
in  the  conflict  so  far  as  his  feelings  were  con 
cerned  and  added,  "I  have  doubtless  suffered  con- 
siderably in  reputation."  He  was  severely 
wrenched  by  their  criticisms  and  replied  while 
his  indignation  had  the  better  of  his  judgment. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

"REPLY"    TO    "REMARKS." 

Up  to  this  time  every  public  utterance  had 
been  prepared  with  the  utmost  care,  with  a  view 
to  permanence  in  literature,  universal  scholarly 
respect,  and  the  highest  influence.  Now  he  for 
got  all  this  and  wrote  without  preparation,  and 
with  a  feeling  of  contempt  for  his  antagonists. 
In  this  last  phase  of  mind  lay  his  greatest  weak- 
ness. Notwithstanding  his  effort  in  the  "Reply'' 
to  give  the  impression  that  he  had  the  highest 
respect  for  teachers — some  teachers — one  cannot 
escape  the  feeling  that  he  had  never  had  any  ade- 
quate respect  for  the  Boston  masters.  He  esti- 
mated them  by  their  numbers,  their  influence 
gained  through  the  other  teachers  who  were 
indebted  to  them,  and  through  their  pupils  whose 
loyalty  was  natural.  In  a  letter  written  at  the 
time  may  be  seen  his  misconception  of  the  men, 
affirming,  as  he  does,  that  these  grammar  school 
masters  saw  their  own  condemnation  in  these 
descriptions  of  their  European  contemporaries, 
and  "resolved  as  a  matter  of  self-preservation,  to 
keep  out  the  infection  of  so  fatal  an  example  as 
was  afforded  by  the  Prussian  schools";  the  spirit 
of  evil  prevailed  among  the  masters;  the  writing 
of  the  "Remarks"  fell  into  bad  hands.  The  same 
spirit  appears  when  he  says  that  the  normal 
school  at  Lexington  was  so  much  above  even  the 
conception  of  most  teachers  as  not  to  be  appreci- 
ated by  them  as  a  rule. 

When  these  "Remarks"  appeared  he  would  not 
acknowledge  their  ability  or  the  strength  of  any 


THE     EDUCATOR.  63 

of  their  positions,  but  applied  ridicule  and  treated 
them  largely  with  contempt.  It  is  easy  to  see  how 
he  could  have  crushed  the  masters  at  a  single  blow 
had  he  dealt  with  them  after  his  usually  careful 
and  artistic  fashion  in  a  paniphlet  of  twenty- 
pages;  instead,  he  chose  to  write  175  pages,  many 
of  which  were  in  no  sense  creditable  to  him. 

He  read  their  "Remarks"  with  astonishment 
and  grief  but  proceeded  to  show  very  clearly  that 
indignation  and  retaliation  played  a  more  impor- 
tant part.  They  were  accused  of  introducing  his_ 
name  a  hundred  times  and  more  in  connection  with 
sentiments  that  he  never  felt  and  with  expressions 
that  he  never  uttered;  they  were  not  philosoph- 
ical but  censorious  and-aspersive;  many  of  them 
were  young,  "mewling  and  purling  in  their  nurses' 
arms"  when  the  principals  of  the  normal  schools 
had  achieved  success;  the  grammar  masters  were 
"like  thirty-one  vulgar  fractions  multiplied  into 
themselves,  yielding  a  most  contemptible  prod- 
uct"; there  were  "sutures  and  overlappings  where 
the  heterogeneous  parts  are  rudely  joined  to- 
gether"; they  showed  a  "culpable  indifference  to 
truth  and  the  sacredness  of  character";  their 
literary  effort  as  claimed  by  themselves  in  the 
"Remarks"  would  have  required  but  a  line  a 
day  from  each  in  the  time  devoted  to  it; 
many  of  the  "Remarks"  were  old  lectures  new- 
vamped;  it  must  have  been  remorseless  imposi- 
tion of  labor;  the  pages  swam  with  error. 

The  depth  of  his  feeling  is  best  shown  when  at 
the  close  of  a  long  plea  for  harmony  between  him- 
self and  the  thirty-one  masters,  he  makes  an  ex- 
ception in  regard  to  one  individual,  the  "author 
whoever  he  may  be  of  the  first  section  as  far  as 
page  38"  saying,  "until  he  changes  his  nature  or 
I  change  my  nature  we  must  continue  to  dwell  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  moral  universe."  He  then 
devotes  more  than  a  page  to  his  characterization 


(J4  HORACE    MANN, 

of  this  "maligner."  Some  of  the  signatures  affected 
him  with  amazement  and  unspeakable  regret  and 
could  tears  of  night  efface  them,  they  would  be 
gladly  shed.  His  report  had  been  mutilated  and 
garbled;  the  shade  had  been  copied  and  all  the 
light  omitted;  a  forgery  of  the  original  had  been 
sent  out;  they  had  made  fraudulent  transposi- 
tions. 

The  "Reply"  was  certainly  earnest  and  the 
writer  had  all  the  over-confidence  of  an  accused 
man  who  knows  his  innocence  and  knows  that  he 
can  prove  it,  but  it  is  inconceivable  that  a  man  of 
his  talent  and  experience  should  recite  the  fact 
that  he  had  taught  district  schools,  tutored  in 
college  and  served  on  a  "country  school  board  as 
though  these  were  any  adequate  training.  It  was 
the  man  and  not  his  trifling  previous  experience 
in  school  work  that  led  to  his  call  to  the  secretary- 
ship. He  nowhere  appears  >to-  less  advantage 
than  when  he  meets  their  arraignment  for  not 
having  visjted  the  Boston  schools.  It  is  incon- 
ceivable that  he  should  give,  pages  to  the 
proof  that  it  was  not  possible  for  them  to  know 
absolutely  of  their  own  experience  whether  or  not 
he  had  visited  the  schools,  since  some  of  them  had 
not  been  teaching  in  their  present  positions  so 
long  and  they  were  not  always  in  attendance;  and 
proceed  to  charge  them  with  bearing  false  wit- 
ness in  testifying  that  they  knew  what  they  could 
not  have  known;  giving  much  space  to  showing 
that  he  had  once  heard  a  singing  lesson,  had 
visited  two  schools  with  the  mayor  spending 
half  an  hour  in  each,  had  been  at  an  exhibition 
and  in  all  had  visited  the  Boston  schools  twelve 
times  in  five  years  and  then  try  to  demonstrate 
that  this  is  their  mathematical  share  of  his  time. 
Tt  wj>s  fruitless,  also,  for  him  to  attempt  to  es- 
cape the  responsibility  for  having  spoken  dis- 
paragingly of  teachers  by  citing  pages  of  fairly 


THE    EDUCATOR.  65 

complimentary  things  said  of  them  in  other 
reports  and  addresses.  No  one  knew  better  than 
Mr.  Mann  that  there  can  'be  no  trial  balance  in 
such  cases,  that  there  are  debts  that  can  never 
be  paid  off  in  that  way.  A  man  may  have  paid 
millions  in  the  past  but  it  does  not  save  him  from 
insolvency  when  the  last  great  debt  appears  in 
judgment.  It  was  equally  useless  for  a  man  in 
his  position  to  seek  exemption  from  the  conse- 
quences of  his  undervaluation  by  quoting  from 
other  lesser  men  who  had  spoken  with  greater 
indiscretion.  There  was  not  wanting  abundance 
of  opportunity  for  a  terrific  blow  had  he  been  in 
the  mood  and  condition  to  have  dealt  it.  Their 
claim  that  the  schools  of  the  Commonwealth  were 
in  excellent  condition  when  he  came  into  office  is 
met  in  a  masterly  manner;  in  many  towns  educa- 
tion was  sadly  neglected;  there  was  no  provision 
for  higher  education  at  public  expense  except  in 
a  few  cities;  there  was  in  many  places  no  provi- 
sion for  children  under  nine  or  ten;  many  schools 
were  open  but  a  few  weeks;  and  many  scholars 
travelled  from  one  section  of  the  town  to  another. 
In  this  their  charge  was  skilfully  met. 

The  assumption  that  he  had  in  any  wise 
attacked  the  Boston  schools  was  almost  cruelly 
met  with  the  cold  facts  that  he  had  merely  men- 
tioned Boston  with  Lexington  and  a  few  other 
places  in  Massachusetts  to  show  the  relative 
location  compared  with  the  places  visited  in 
Europe,  and  that  the  attempt  to  make  him  con- 
nect Boston  with  the  Scotch  schools  was  more 
than  absurd,  it  was  vicious.  There  is  no  gainsay- 
ing his  accusation  that  their  method  of  making 
him  say  what  he  never  said  would  make  the  Bible 
say  there  is  no  God  when  it  merely  recites  the  fact 
the  fool  hath  said  this  in  his  heart.  Mr.  Mann 
admits  the  justice  of  the  charge  of  redundancy 
of  metaphor  and  illustration,  and  says  it  is  the 


66  HORACE    MANN, 

fault  of  his  mind,  and  that  if  they  could  only 
know  how  much  he  strives  against  it  they  would 
pity  rather  than  censure. 

While  all  of  the  masters  were  not  in  full  sym- 
pathy with  the  tone  and  temper  of  the  "Remarks" 
in  every  particular,  the  fraternal  sentiment  led 
to  the  signing  of  them,  and  all  but  W.  J.  Adams 
stood  together  loyally.  Mr.  Mann  had  an  experi- 
ence at  Brown  University  from  which  he  should 
have  learned  to  sympathize  with  the  "thirty-one." 
He  was  chosen  orator  of  a  mock  service  in  the 
chapel  and  the  college  authorities  forbade  the 
exercise.  Mann  did  not  favor  the  carrying  out  of 
the  plans,  but  when  he  found  that  the  others  would 
insist  he  said,  "I  would  better  rebel  against  the 
college  government  than  against  the  majority  of 
my  fellow  students,"  and  so  he  went  ahead  with 
them  and  delivered  his  oration.  It  was  this  spirit 
that  made  the  thirty-one  Boston  masters  a  unit 
in  their  "Remarks." 

Mr.  Mann's  "Reply"  was  a  great  surprise  to 
both  sides,  revealing  him  in  a  new  light.  Such 
vindictiveness  was  not  supposed  to  be  in  his 
nature.  All  the  intensity  of  twenty  years  of 
political  and  official  life  and  religious  controversy 
had  not  called  forth  upon  the  combined  enemies 
of  all  truth,  righteousness  and  progress  a  hun- 
dredth part  of  the  terrors  of  this  "Reply."  Its 
assumptions  and  assurances  were  so  extravagant, 
its  denunciations  so  violent,  its  claims  to  personal 
superiority  so  heroic  that  it  fairly  dazed  the 
public  and  for  the  moment  paralyzed  the  masters. 
The  masters  were  in  a  most  uncomfortable  and 
unfortunate  position.  He  had  made  them  ap- 
pear to  antagonize  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  Cyrus 
Pierce,  George  B.  Emerson  and  others.  Like 
magic  the  social,  intellectual  and  progressive 
political  leaders  rallied  as  champions  of  Mr. 
Mann,  who  showed  himself  to  be  a  terrific  fighter 


THE     EDUCATOR.  67 

and  a  merciless  foe.  The  peace  he  offered  the 
masters,  provided  they  would  offer  up  Barnum 
Field  as  a  scapegoat,  could  not  be  thought  of  for 
a  moment,  and  Mr.  Mann  accepted  that  as  a  chal- 
lenge from  the  thirty-one.  He  enlisted  the  press 
very  generally  against  the  masters  and  took  a 
personal  interest  in  electing  members  of  the 
school  board  who  were  his  ardent  friends.  It  was 
decided  to  have  a  vigorous  examination  of  the 
grammar  schools  and  the  masters  petitioned  the 
.mayor  not  to  appoint  either  Dr.  Howe  or  Mr.  Brig- 
ham  for  either  of  the  examinations,  but  he  made 
each  chairman  of  one  of  the  committees  therefor. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  discomfiting  to 
the  masters  of  a  greater  triumph  for  Mr.  Mann, 
who  advised  with  the  committee  regarding  the 
removal  of  several  ^of  the  masters,  four  of  whom 
soon  retired  from  the  service.  When  the  results 
of  the  examinations,  which  had  no  single  ray  of 
cheer  in  them,  were  made  public  eight  thousand 
copies  were  printed  for  free  distribution.  It  was 
at  such  an  hour  of  triumph  for  Mr.  Mann  that  they 
prepared  the  "Rejoinder"  to  the  "Reply"  to  the 
"Remarks"  upon  his  seventh  report. 


CHAPTER   XH. 

"REJOINDER"    TO   THE    "REPLY." 

Mr.  Barnum  Field,  respectfully  declined  to 
sign  the  "Rejoinder"  because  Mr.  Mann  had  said 
that  he  was  never  to  be  forgiven  and  they  must 
continue  to  dwell  on  opposite  sides  of  the  moral 
universe.  In  his  place  appeared  a  powerful 
presentation  of  the  case  of  the  thirty-one  masters, 
calm,  clear,  firm,  earnest.  The  writers  of  the 
other  sections  were  Win.  A.  Shepard,  S.  S.  Greene, 
and  Joseph  Hale. 

Read  to-day,  this  first  part  stands  as  an  un- 
impeachable indictment  of  the  matter,  method 
and  manner  of  Mr.  Mann's  "Reply."  He 
is  charged  with  misunderstanding  or  mis- 
representing their  "Remarks";  with  having  ac- 
cused them  of  wThat  was  farthest  from  their 
thought;  with  having  attributed  motives  of  which 
they  never  dreamed;  with  injustice,  impatience 
and  ill  temper.  They  lose  much,  however,  from 
being  forced  to  apologize  for  what  Mr.  Mann  had 
made  them  appear  to  have  said  and  for  having  to 
take  the  attitude  of  defence  of  themselves  as  well 
as  of  their  "Remarks."  Their  great  gain  was  in 
throwing  back  upon  Mr.  Mann  every  one  of  the 
really  good  points  he  had  made  against  them. 
Where  he  had  represented  them  as  falsifiers  not 
worthy  to  be  instructors  of  youth  because  they 
had  asserted  that  he  knew  nothing  of  the 
Boston  schools — claiming  to  have  visited  these 
schools  twelve  times  in  the  five  years  specified— 
they  show  that  five  of  these  occasions,  by  his  own 
admission,  were  after  the  writing  of  the  report ; 


THE    EDUCATOR.  69 

that  the  other  seven  had  not  averaged  fifteen 
minutes  each ;  that  one  was  to  examine  a  map  ex- 
hibition; one  to  see  the  building;  one  was  after 
school  hours;  one  was  after  the  recitations  closed; 
one  at  an  exhibition ;  one  for  the  purpose  of  mak- 
ing a  speech ;  one  to  hear  a  lesson  in  music. 

Mr.  Mann  had  made  much  of  the  fact  that  he 
had  frequently  visited  Mr.  Harrington's  and  Mr. 
Tower's  schools  for  they  were  the  best  in  the  city, 
but  the  former  had  left  teaching  before  the  five 
years'  limit  and  the  latter  two  years  before  that. 

Mr.  Mann's  attempt  to  escape  their  shaft  at  his 
tens  of  thousands  of  pupils  visited  in  Prussia  on 
the  ground  that  he  had  said,  "I  think  I  may  say'' 
and  had  not  put  it  positively,  is  turned  upon  him 
with  irresistible  force  because  he  said,  "I  think  I 
may  say,  within  bounds,  tens  of  thousands."  Mr. 
Mann  is  left  without  one  unchallenged  personal 
position  and  in  every  way  his  "Reply"  is  shown  to 
be  more  vulnerable  than  his  report.  Many  of  the 
wonderful  methods  seen  in  Prussia,  published 
and  glorified  as  coming  from  there  were  in  daily 
use  in  Boston  and  had  been  for  four  or  five  years. 
The  masters  had  been  studying  these  new  things 
from  Prussia  in  advance  and  had  adopted  some, 
and  adapted  others  and  his  ignorance  thereof  is 
made  to  recoil  upon  him  with  much  force. 

Mr.  Shepard's  "Rejoinder"  is  more  sarcastic, 
more  brilliant  and  consequently  less  effective.  He 
was  a  young  man  but  talented  and  specially  gifted 
in  controversy  and  among  the  many  rankling  sug- 
gestions was  the  irresistible  ridicule  in  comment- 
ing upon  the  Sunday-school  visitation.  In  attempt- 
ing to  parry  the  thrust  in  the  "Remarks"  where 
Mr.  Shepard  had  figured  out  thirty-six  days  in 
six  weeks,  Mr.  Mann  had  insisted  that  as  he  had 
visited  Sunday  schools  these  ought  to  be  included 
and  the  whole  be  figured  on  the  basis  of  forty-two 
days,  which  correction  Mr.  Shepard  allows  very 


70  HORACE    MANN, 

graciously  but  in  a  decidedly  merry  vein.  Among 
the  pleasantries  of  Mr.  Shepard  is  a  figuring  out 
of  the  "leaps  into  the  air  in  a  Scotch  school."  In 
Mr.  Mann's  ardent  description  of  this  school, 
speaking  of  the  enthusiasm,  he  declares  that  the 
children  "actually  leap  into  the  air  from  the  energy 
of  their  impulses,  and  repeat  this  as  often  as  once 
in  two  minutes  on  the  average,"  and  Mr.  Shepard 
shows  that  this  must  mean  three  thousand,  six 
hundred  "leaps  into  the  air"  or  one  leap  every  two 
seconds. 

Mr.  S.  S.  Greene's  "Rejoinder"  is  a  dignified  dis 
cussion  of  what  has  since  come  to  be  regarded  as 
the  "word"  method  of  teaching  reading,  and  al- 
though "logical,"  bright  and  brilliant,  it  appears 
so  absurd  in  the  light  of  modern  revelations  that 
one  reads  it  with  impatience.  From  the  first  Mr. 
Mann  had  every  pedagogical  advantage  as  they 
had  the  personal.  He  knew  that  he  was  in  the 
right,  knew  that  the  new  methods  in  reading, 
geography,  language  and  arithmetic  were  as  sure 
to  come  as  noon  to  follow  the  dawn.  There  has 
scarcely  been  an  idea  in  all  the  departures  of  re 
cent  years  not  embodied  in  Mr.  Mann's  seventh 
report.  ^Every  progressive  movement  in  teaching 
words,  in  using  maps,  in  nature  study,  in  abolish- 
ing corporal  punishment,  in  emphasizing  the 
moral  element  in  education  was  championed  with 
intensity  by  Mr.  Mann  in  his  seventh  report,  fifty 
years  ago. 

Miss  Mathilde  E.  Coffin  has  made  quite  a  sensa- 
tion by  introducing  into  the  Detroit  schools  ex- 
amples and  problems  made  from  the  facts  daily 
presented  by  the  press  on  the  ground  that  every 
example  should  give  some  useful  information  as 
well  as  present  opportunity  for  practice.  Mr. 
Mann  wrote  a  text-book  on  arithmetic  based  on 
that  idea,  pure  and  simple,  nearly  half  a  century 
since. 


THE    EDUCATOR.  71 

The  "Kemarks"  and  the  "Rejoinder"  were 
mainly  devoted  to  defending  what  no  power  could 
save  and  the  sentiment  of  the  city  realized  it.  The 
logical  skill  and  masterly  style  of  these  two  great 
documents,  together  with  the  fact  that  every  one 
recognized  that  they  had  the  advantage  of  him  in 
the  controversy  but  gave  greater  emphasis  to  the 
truth  for  which  he  stood.  The  strength  of  these 
two  masterpieces  of  controversy  was  their  weak- 
ness and  with  the  appearance  of  the  "Rejoinder" 
Mr.  Mann's  place  as  an  educator  was  for  the  first 
time  unchallenged,  and  the  city  and  the  state  were 
ready  to  do  his  bidding  for  the  advancement  of 
education.  The  "Rejoinder"  caused  no  ripple  of 
excitement,  the  public  interest  in  the  controversy 
had  abated,  public  judgment  was  made  up  and 
language  counted  for  little.  Mr.  Mann  was  en- 
throned as  the  genius  of  educational  progress 
and  few  took  the  trouble  to  read  what  was  so  well 
said  by  his  antagonists.  It  was  the  old,  old  story 
with  which  the  world  is  so  familiar.  "There  is  a 
tide  in  the  affairs  of  men,  which  taken  at  the  flood 
leads  on  to  fortune." 


CHAPTER    Xni. 

THE    "ANSWER"    AND    THE    CRISIS. 

Mr.  Mann's  "Answer"  to  the  "Rejoinder"  shows 
him  in  quite  a  different  light.  "Richard  is  him- 
self again."  He  was  certainly  not  himself  when 
he  wrete  his  "Reply."  He  admitted  afterward 
that  he  was  driven  to  the  wall  and  must  turn  upon 
his  pursuer  and  vindicate  himself.  It  was  an  act 
of  desperation.  It  grieved  his  friends,  who  lost 
no  time  in  rallying  to  his.  assistance. 

The  details  of  the  conflict  were  taken  out  of  his 
hands  at  once.  It  was  seen  that  he  was  no  better 
qualified  to  conduct  his  own  case  than  a  lawyer 
to  plead  his  own  cause  or  a  physician  to  admin- 
ister to  himself  in  a  high  fever.  Thirty  of  the 
most  eminent  men  of  Boston  organized  them- 
selves at  once  to  withstand  the  attack  of  the 
thirty  masters — Mr.  Adam's  withdrawal  having 
reduced  their  number  to  thirty.  They  .took  in 
hand  the  election  of  school  boards,  the  naming  of 
committees  for  the  examination  of  the 'grammar 
schools,  the  removal  of  inefficient  grammar 
masters, — four  of  whom  were  dismissed  within 
two  years, — the  management  of  the  Legislature 
and  all  other  matters  of  this  kind.  The  names  of 
these  men  were  never  made  public  and  their  co- 
operation was  not  known  for  a  long  time.  The 
masters  thought  their  triumph  was  to  be  sure  and 
speedy.  They  had  every  reason  so  to  think,  and 
some  of  them  had  said,  in  the  hour  of  over-confi- 
dence, "the  board  of  education  is  already  abol- 
ished, we  only  await  the  action  of  the  Legislature 
to  record  the  fact."  They  soon  found,  however, 


THE    EDUCATOR.  73 

that  they  were  not  in  a  conflict  with  Mr.  Mann  but 
with  the  spirit  of  progress  itself,  with  principali- 
ties and  powers,  with  unseen  forces,  social  and 
political. 

No  men  or  body  of  men  could  have  won 
in  such  a  contest.  In  it  all  of  Mr.  Mann's 
grandeur  was  apparent.  His  friendships  were  in 
evidence,  Josiah  Quincy,  Charles  Sumner,  Ed- 
ward Everett,  John  G.  Whittier,  Henry  Wilson, 
Anson  P.  Burlingame,  Theodore  Parker,  with 
merchants,  bankers  and  professional  men,  ar- 
rayed themselves  with  him.  These  thirty  at  once 
raised  among  themselves  $5,000  and  asked  the 
Legislature  for  a  like  sum,  that  thus  $10,000  migUt 
be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Board  of  Education 
for  the  improvement  of  the  normal  schools. 
Charles  Sunnier  gave  his  bond  for  the  payment 
of  this  sum.  This  was  done  as  a  vote  of  confi- 
dence in  the  board  and  its  secretary  and  it  passed 
almost  unanimously.  For  the  first  time  there 
was  no  opposition  in  the  Legislature  to  the  Board 
or  to  anything  that  it  proposed.  Indifference  to 
education  everywhere  disappeared  and  even  the 
state  teachers'  association  that  had  arranged  a 
program  attacking  the  Board,  read  the  signs  of 
the  times  in  season  to  change  the  plans  and  have 
no  reference  to  the  Board  whatever. 

Mr.  Mann's  " Answer"  recognized  the  fact  that 
he  had  nothing  to  fear  and  although  he  can 
scarcely  be  accused  of  being  merciful,  he  was 
temperate,  and  the  chastisements  which  he  ad- 
ministered were  with  the  hand  of  a  master.  The 
"Rejoinder"  had  explained  very  fully  that  the 
"Remarks"  did  not  mean  what  the  "Reply"  had 
made  them  seem  to  mean,  and  he  skilfully  humil- 
iated the  masters  by  accepting  their  adequate 
apology.  With  the  same  force  he  declines  to 
notice  the  "bitterness"  in  the  "Rejoinder"  on  the 
ground  that  bitterness  is  bitter  enough  when  it  is 


74  HORACE    JtfA.Y.Y. 

fresh,  but  it  is  intolerable  wheii  it  u  sour.  T..e 
''Answer"  had  little  interest  then  and  less  now  for 
it  was  understood  then  and  is  better  understood 
now  that  the  controversy  had  been  fought  out  on 
.general  influences  rather  than  in  the  technicali- 
ties of  discussion.  Xo  one  cared  how  many  times 
he  had  visited  the  Boston  schools,  for  what  he 
had  gone,  or  with  whom.  None  en  red  how  many 
schools  he  had  visited  in  six  weeks  in  Prussia  nor 
how  many  'Teaps  into  the  air"  the  children  made 
per  minute  in  the  Scotch  school;  none  cared  for 
the  question  of  veracity  or  the  extent  of  the  flights 
of  rhetoric  or  imagination.  It  was  enough  that 
Mr.  Mann  had  established  the  principle  that 
teachers  should  be  trained,  that  was  common 
sense;  that  there  should  be  less  corporal  punish- 
ment, that  was  common  sense  also, — the  number 
of  punishments  in  Boston  were  reduced  eighty 
per  cent  in  two  years  after  the  "Remarks";  that 
he  believed  in  methods  in  reading,  geography  and 
arithmetic,  that  looked  sensible  on  the  surface. 
and  the  general  verdict  was  that  it  .was  vicious  ror 
the  masters  to  annoy  him  and  call  him  off  from 
his  greater  work. 

The  weakness  of  his  "Reply"  and  the  strength 
of  the  "Remarks"  and  of  the  "Rejoinder"  con-, 
cerned  no  one.  The  world  had  its  own  interests 
and  concerned  itself  not  the  least  with  the  justice 
or  the  injustice  of  the  case,  with  argumentative 
winnings  and  losings  of  the  disputants.  The  pub- 
lic formed  its  judgments  by  the  logic  of  events 
and  that  verdict  glorified  Horace  Mann  and  mado 
him  educationally  immortal. , 

There  is  no  better  opportunity  to  study  tin* 
hidden  forces  in  society  than  is  presented  by  tin* 
conditions  in  Boston  in  1843-6  and  the  experi- 
ences of  Horace  Mann  and  the  thirty-one  Boston 
masters. 

Mr.  Mann  made  an  educational  crisis.     To  make 


THE    EDUCATOR.  75 

a  crisis  one  must  focus  public  attention  upon 
some  issue;  force  the  opponents  to  make  so  clear 
a  presentation  as  to  satisfy  all  parties  interested; 
and  convince  the  disinterested  public  that  the 
opposition  occupies  wholly  untenable  ground. 
This  is  the  highest  achievement  of  a  reformer. 
No  man  is  great  who  cannot  in  the  emergency 
focus  public  attention  upon  his  issue,  who  does 
not  succeed  in  getting  a  mighty  presentation  of 
the  opposition,  who  does  not  win  the  disinterested 
public.  Pitt's  fame  was  largely  due  to  Walpole; 
and  Disraeli's  to  Gladstone.  Webster's  niche  is 
largely  due  to  the  masterly  speech  of  Hayne  to 
whom  he  could  and  did  reply,  and  Lincoln  would 
never  have  had  the  opportunity  to  immortalize 
himself  but  for  the  mighty  speeches  of  Stephen 
A.  Douglas  which  he  answered.  Horace  Mann 
would  never  have  had  his  place  as  an  educator 
but  for  the  controversy  with  the  Boston  masters. 
\Vere  it  possible,  as  il  is  not,  to  rob  those  two 
great  documents — the  "Remarks'-'  and  the  "He- 
joinder" — of  their  strength,  Mr.  Mann  would  be 
robbed  largely  of  his  preeminence.  His  first 
five  reports  and  his  crusades  up  and  down  t  In- 
state had  focused  public  attention,  but  in  all  those 
years  there  were  well-defined  suspicions  that 
his  was  not  a  disinterested  service,  that  his  wis- 
dom was  not  without  alloy.  The  Unitarians  had 
captured  most  of  the  churches  in  ;u)d  about  Bos- 
ton, they  had  taken  to  themselves  Harvard  col- 
lege and  there  were  not  wanting  those  who 
hinted  broadly  that  Mr;  Maim  had  sectarian 
designs  on  the  public  s  hools. 
•  So  long  as  he  lectured  abstractly,  and  talked  of 
reforms  that  were  needed  people  were  willing 
that  he  should  talk;  when  the  "Remarks"  ap- 
peared everybody  said,  as  they  did  of  Walpole  a 
hundred  years  earlier,  of  Gladstone,  of  Hayne  and 
of  Douglas  in  their  time,  "that  is  unanswerable." 


76  HORACE    MANN. 

The  associates  of  the  masters,  like  the  associates 
of  Walpole  and  Douglas,  rallied  about  their 
champions  but  the  disinterested  public  went  with 
Mr.  Mann  as  it  had  gone  with  Mr.  Lincoln  in  the 
Douglas  debates.  He  had  made  a  crisis  and  his 
seventh  report  was  an  immortal  document;  oppo 
sition  to  the  normal  schools  was  never  more  to  be 
heard  in  the  land  and  oral  instruction,  the  word 
method  and  less  corporal  punishment  were  cer- 
tain to  come  to  the  Boston  schools.  He  who 
magnifies  those  great  opposing  documents  helps 
to  give  the  crisis  maker  his  place  upon  the  throne. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

THE    STATESMAN. 

When  Mr.  Mann  left  law  and  politics  for  an  edu- 
cational career  he  lost  caste  politically.  His  in- 
fluence waned.  He  was  not  sought  for  cam 
paigning  and  the  Legislature  where  lie  had  served 
for  many  years  heeded  his  pleadings  little  more 
ihan  those  of  the  stranger.  Before  the  echoes  of 
the  controversy  had  died  away,  Mr.  Mann  was  se- 
lected from  Daniel  Webster's  Congressional  dis- 
trict to  take  the  seat  in  Congress  made  vacant  by 
the  sudden  death  in  the  House  of  ex-President 
John  Quincy  Adams  and  that  from  a  district  in 
which  he  had  resided  but  a  short  time.  It  was  an 
honor  such  as  has  rarely  come  to  an  educator. 

From  the  first  he  attracted  attention  in  Wash- 
ington because  of  his  reputation  and  forensic 
power.  He  had  been  in  Congress  but  a  little 
time  when  Mr.  Webster  delivered  his  famous — 
many  thought  infamous — seventh  of  March 
speech  in  which  he  outraged  the  political  senti- 
ment of  Massachusetts.  What  Mr.  Webster 
thought  sure  to  add  to  his  political  prospects  and 
to  the  business  advantage  of  Boston  was  inter- 
preted to  his  disadvantage.  Mr.  Mann  seized  the 
occasion  for  heroic  action.  He  reasoned,  as  lu- 
afterward  admitted,  that,  with  the  feeling  against 
Mr.  Webster  because  of  this  speech,  he  would 
not  venture  to  be  a  candidate  for  reelection;  if  lie 
did,  defeat  was  certain.  In  view  of  these  condi- 
tions Mr.  Mann  made  a  vigorous,  keen,  severe 
attack  upon  Mr.  Webster  which  angered  that 
statesman  as  nothing  in  his  experience  had  done 


78  H<>  HACK    MANN, 

before.  This  was  due  partly  to  the  fact  that  it 
came  when  he  was  unprepared  to  meet  it  and 
partly  because  of  the  audacity  of  the  man,  and  as 
he  thought,  impropriety  of  the  junior  congress- 
man administering  a  rebuke  to  the  senior  senator. 

The  best  laid  plans  sometimes  come  to  naught. 
A i  this  juncture  President  Taylor  died,  Mr. 
Film  ore  succeeded  him,  Mr.  Webster  was  made 
secretary  of  state  and  became  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  the  administration  with  all  the 
patronage  for  New  England  at  his  disposal. 
Nothing  could  have  been  worse  for  Mr.  Mann. 
The  condemnation  was  now  directed  to  him  and 
criticisms,  public  and  private,  were  showered 
upon  him.  When  his  term  expired  and  he  was  up  for 
r< 'election  Mr.  Webster  and  the  entire  party  ma- 
chinery worked  against  him  with  such  vigor  that 
he  lost  the  renomination  by  a  single  vote.  He  de- 
clared himself  an  independent  candidate,  spoke  in 
every  village  and  hamlet  in  the  district,  and  was 
elected  over  the  regular  nominee  by  a  large  vote. 
This  was  a  personal  triumph  for  Mr.  Mann,  but 
for  Mr.  Webster  it  was  a  personal  rebuke  which 
he  felt  keenly. 

Mr.  Mann's  congressional  record  was  eminently 
creditable  and  demonstrated  his  statesmanlike 
qualities.  At  the  close  of  the  regulation  term  in 
Congress  he  was  made  the  candidate  of  the  new 
party  of  Simmer,  Wilson,  Burlingame  and  others 
for  governor.  There  was  no  possibility  that  year 
of  his  election  and  he  put  no  heart  into  the  cam- 
paign. His  nomination  was  made  by  Henry  Wil- 
son and  seconded  by  Anson  P.  Bnrlingame  in 
speeches  that  were  among  the  noblest  tributes 
ever  offered  a  candidate.  With  this  he  retired 
from  the  political  arena  where  he  had  won  laurels 
and  had  been  of  great  service  to  humanity.  The 
brilliancy  of  this  experience  added  a  halo  to  his 
educational  service  which  gave  it  character  and 
statesmanlike  dignity. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

AT    ANTIOCH    COLLEGE. 

Aii  inscrutable  Providence  or  a  cruel  fate  led 
Mr.  Mann  at  the  age  of  fifty-six  to  accept  the  pres- 
idency of  Antioch  college,  YellowT  Springs,  Ohio, 
and  attempt  the  impossible  under  conditions  that 
chafed  and  rasped  him  for  the  remaining  years 
of  his  eventful  life. 

In  America  there  are  two  sad  picjures,  an  edu- 
cator out  of  place1  at  fifty-six  and  a  politician 
out  of  a  job  at  any  time.  Mr  Mann's  defeat  for 
the  governorship,  although  in  no  sense  a  sur 
prise,  left  him  with  no  immediate  political  future, 
and  he  may  be  pardoned  if  he  did  not  see  any 
educational  attractions  in  New  England.  Had 
he  rested  for  a  few  months  many  choices  would 
have  been  presented.  The  lecture  platform,  the 
literary  arena  or  any  one  of  many  educational 
positions  would  have  been  available,  but  the 
friends  of  Antioch  college  had  enlisted  his  sym- 
pathies, appealed  to  his  self-sacrificing  devotion, 
magnified  the  possibilities,  misrepresented — let  it 
be  hoped  unintentionally — the  reality,  and  he 
took  his  family  out  of  Massachusetts  that  he  had 
blessed  into  an  institution,  community  and  condi- 
tions which  were  at  that  time  as  ill  adapted  to 
him  as  the  depths  of  the  sea  to  a  canary. 

Religiously,  educationally,  politically,  socially,  y 
philanthropically  he  was  misplaced.  His  friends 
have  sometimes  heaped  abuse  upon  the  men  and 
the  community  that  wore  him  out  completely  in 
six  years,  wrecking  him  physically  and  shading 
every  hour  of  those  last  years,  but  it  is  probable 


80  HORACE    MA.NN, 

that  he  was  as  great  a  burden  to  them  as  they 
were  to  him.  It  is  useless  to  censure,  but  much 
charity  is  required  for  a  worshipper  at  the  shrine 
of  Horace  Mann  to  see  his  family  literally 
"dumped"  homeless  and  friendless  upon  the 
debris  of  that  college  yard  with  no  house  in  the 
town,  no  rooms  in  the  building  ready  for,  or  ap- 
proaching readiness,  for  wife  and  children, 
and  that  was  really  as  bright  a  day  as  he  saw 
until  his  beautiful  translation  to  the  Land  Im- 
mortal from  the  bosom  of  his  family,  August  2, 
1858. 

He  was  misplaced  but  he  could  not,  would  not 
retreat  and  against  the  advice  of  all  friends  he 
stayed  and  hoped  against  hope,  sacrificed  religious 
ideals,  personal  comforts,  home  privileges  and 
continued  to  bury  the  money  of  his  friends.  He 
fought  opposition  in  an  arena  where  he  was  at 
every  disadvantage  until  at  the  age  of  sixty-two 
his  spirit  seemed  to  float  away  in  a  delightful 
vision  and  a  glorious  inheritance  remained  for 
the  widow  and  orphan  of  one  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful, grand  and  noble  characters  that  has  blessed 
this  land. 

A  fractional  part  of  the  energy,  wisdom,  devo- 
tion that  wrere  wasted  at  Antioch  would  have  im- 
mortalized him  as  a  college  president  at  Williams 
or  at  Oberlin,  but  the  history  of  education  has 
gj lined  much  from  the  failure  of  his  party  to  win 
in  the  gubernatorial  contest  of  1852  and  from  the 
failure  to  establish  an  educational  institution  of 
national  fame  in  southeastern  Ohio  for  from 
the  public  mind  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life  have 
faded  from  memory  and  all  that  remains  to  be 
more  and  more  glorified  are  the  ten  years  of  sac- 
rifice and  devotion,  of  heroism  and  wisdom,  of 
talent  and  genius  with  which  the  schools  of 
Massachusetts  were  blessed,  as  have  been  the 
schools  of  no  other  commonwealth.  In  front  of 


THE    EDUCATOR.  81 

the  State  House,  in  storm  and  sunshine,  as  a  work 
of  art,  stands  a  noble  statue  of  a  grand  man,  but 
a  fitter  memorial  is  the  manhood  and  woman- 
hood of  Massachusetts,  all  the  brighter  and 
better  because  of  the  life,  the  labor  and  the  love 
of 

HORACE  MANN. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

A-B-C    IN    THE    CONTROVERSY. 

The  first  question  to  arise  with  every  reader  of 
these  pages  thus  far  will  be, — "Why  not  include 
the  controversy?"  The  answer  is  very  simple. 
Because  the  six  principal  documents  would  of 
themselves  require  a  book  twelve  times  the  size 
of  this.  All  that  can  be  attempted  is  to  give  in 
the  concluding  chapter  a  few  selections  regarding 
one  phase  of  the  contest.  The  a-b-c  will  afford  as 
good  an  illustration  as  any.  This  is  Mr.  Mann's 
(Inscription  of  the  word  method  or  as  he  styled  it, 
the  Prussian  way  of  teaching  children  to  read. 

"The  teacher  first  drew  a  house  upon  the  black- 
board. By  the  side  of  the  drawing  and  under  it, 
he  wrote  the  word  house.  With  a  long  pointing 
rod  he  ran  over  the  form  of  the  letters, — the  chil- 
dren, with  their  slates  before  them  and  their 
pencils  in  their  hands,  looking  at  the  pointing  rod 
and  tracing  the  forms  of  the  letters  in  the  air. 
The  next  process  was  to  copy  the  word  'house,' 
both  in  script  and  in  print,  on  their  slates.  Then 
followed  the  formation  of  the  sounds  of  the  letters 
of  which  the  word  was  composed,  and  the  spelling 
of  the  word.  Here  the  names  of  the  letters  were 
not  given  but  only  the  sounds  which  those  letters 
have  in  combination.  The  letter  h  was,  first 
selected  and  set  up  in  the  reading-frame,  and  the 
children,  instead  of  articulating  our  alphabetic  h, 
(aitch,)  merely  gave  a  hard  breathing, — such  a 
sound  as  the  letter  really  has  in  the  word  'house.' 
Then  the  diphthong,  au  (the  German  word  for 
'house'  is  spelled  'haus')  was  taken  and  sounded 


rut:   EDUCATOR.  8.3 

by  itself,  in  the  same  way.  Then  the  blocks  con- 
taining h,  and  au,  were  brought  together,  and  the 
two  sounds  were  combined.  Lastly,  the  letter  ^ 
was  first  sounded  by  itself,  then  added  to  the 
others,  and  then  the  whole  word  was  spoken. 
Sometimes  the  last  letter  in  a  word  was  first  taken 
and  sounded, — after  that  the  penultimate, — and 
so  on  until  the  word  was  completed.  The  re- 
sponses of  the  children  were  sometimes  individual, 
and  sometimes  simultaneous,  according  to  a 
signal  given  by  the  master. 

uln  every  such  school,  also,  there  are  printed 
sheets  or  cards,  containing  the  letters,  diphthongs 
and  whole  words.  The  children  are  taught  to 
sound  a  diphthong,  and  then  asked  in  what  words 
that  sound  occurs.  On  some  of  these  cards  there 
are  words  enough  to  make  several  short  sentences, 
and  when  the  pupils  are  a  little  advanced,  the 
teacher  points  to  several  isolated  words  in  succes- 
sion, which  wrhen  taken  together  make  a  familiar 
sentence,  and  thus  he  gives  them  an  agreeable 
surprise,  and  a  pleasant  initiation  into  reading. 

"After  the  word  'house'  was  thus  completely 
impressed  upon  the  minds  of  the  children,  the 
teacher  drew  his  pointing  rod  over  the  lines  which 
formed  the  house;  and  the  children  imitated  him, 
first  in  the  air,  while  they  were  looking  at  his 
motions,  then  on  their  slates.  In  their  drawings 
there  was  of  course  a  great  variety  as  to  taste  and 
accuracy;  but  each  seemed  pleased  with  his  own, 
for  their  first  attempts  had  never  been  so  criti- 
cised as  to  produce  discouragement.  Several 
children  were  then  called  to  the  blackboard  to 
draw  a  house  with  chalk.  After  this,  the  teacher 
entered  into  a  conversation  about  houses." 

"<  Compare  the  above  method  wTith  that  of  calling 
ii])  a  class  of  abecedarians, — or,  what  is  more 
common,  a  single  child,  and.  while  the  teacher 
holds  a  book  or  a  card  before  him,  and,  with  a 


S4  HORACE    J/.1.Y.V, 

pointer  in  his  hand,  says,  a,  he  echoes  a;  then  6, 
and  he  echoes  b;  and  so  on  until  the  vertical  row  of 
lifeless  and  ill-favored  characters  is  completed, 
and  then  of  remanding  him  to  his  seat,  to  sit  still 
and  look  at  vacancy.  If  the  child  is  bright,  the 
time  which  passes  during  this  lesson  is  the  only 
part  of  the  day  when  he  does  not  think.  Not  a 
single  faculty  of  the  mind  is  occupied  except  that 
of  imitating  sounds ;  and  even  the  number  of  these 
imitations  amounts  only  to  twenty-six.  A  parrot^ 
or  an  idiot  could  do  the  same  thing.  And  so  of 
the  organs  and  members  of  the  body.  They  are 
condemned  to  inactivity; — for  the  child  who 
stands  most  like  a  post  is  most  approved;  nay,  he 
is  rebuked  if  he  does  not  stand  like  a  post.  ' \ 
head  that  does  not  turn  to  the  right  or  left,  an  eye 
that  lies  moveless  in  its  socket,  hands  hanging 
motionless  at  the  side,  and  feet  immovable  as 
those  of  a  statue,  are  the  points  of  excellence, 
while  the  child  is  echoing  the  senseless  table  of  a, 
b,  c.  As  a  general  rule,  six  months  are  spent  be- 
fore the  twenty-six  letters  are  mastered,  though 
the  same  child  would  learn  the  names  of  twenty- 
six  playmates  or  twenty-six  playthings  in  one  or 
two  days." 

"The  practice  of  beginning  with  the  'Names  of 
Letters,'  is  founded  upon  the  idea  that  it  facili- 
tates the  combination  of  them  into  words.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  believe  that  if  two  children,  of 
equal  quickness  and  capacity,  are  taken,  one  of 
whom  can  name  every  letter  of  the  alphabet,  at 
sight,  and  the  other  does  not  know  them  from 
Chinese  characters,  the  latter  can  be  most  easily 
taught  to  read, — in  other  words,  that  learning  the 
letters  first  is  an  absolute  hindrance." 

"The  letter  a,  says  Worcester,  has  seven  sounds, 
as  in  fate,  fat,  fare,  far,  fast,  fall,  liar.  In  the 
alphabet,  and  as  a  name,  it  has  but  one, — the  long 
sound.  Now  suppose  the  words  of.  our  language 


THE    EDUCATOR.  85 

in  which  this  letter  occurs,  to  be  equally  divided 
among  these  seven  classes.  The  consequence 
must  be  that  as  soon  as  the  child  begins  to  read, 
he  will  find  one  word  in  which  the  letter  a  has  the 
sound  he  has  been  taught  to  give  it,  and  six  words 
in  which  it  has  a  different  sound.  If,  then,  he 
follows  the  instruction  he  has  received,  he  goes 
wrong  six  times  to  going  right  once.  Indeed,  in 
gunning  over  a  score  of  his  most  familiar  words, — 
such  as  papa,  mama,  father,  apple,  hat,  cat,  rat,  ball, 
fall,  call,  warm,  swarm,  man,  can,  pan,  ran,  brass, 
glass,  water,  star,  etc.,  he  does  not  find,  in  a  single 
instance,  that  sound  of  a  which  he  has  been  taught 
to  give  it  in  the  alphabet." 

"Did  the  vowels  adhere  to  their  own  sounds,  the 
difficulty  would  be  greatly  diminished.  But,  not 
only  do  the  same  vowels  appear  in  different 
dresses,  like  masqueraders,  but,  like  harlequins, 
they  exchange  garbs  with  each  other.  How  often 
does  e  take  the  sound  of  a,  as  in  there,  where,  etc. ; 
and  i,  the  sound  of  e;  and  o,  the  sound  df  u;  and  u, 
the  sound  of  o;  and  y,  the  sound  of  i. 

"In  one  important  particular  the  consonants  are 
more  perplexing  than  the  vowels.  The  very  defi- 
nition of  a  consonant,  as  given  in  the  spelling 
books,  is,  <a  letter  which  has  no  sound,  or  only  air 
imperfect  one,  without  the  help  of  a  vowel.'  And 
yet  the  definers  themselves,  and- the  teachers  who 
follow  them,  proceed  immediately  to  give  a  per- 
fect sound  to  all  the  consonants." 

"I  believe  it  is  within  bounds  to  say,  that  we  do 
not  sound  the  letters  in  reading  once  in  a 
hundred  times  as  we  were  taught  to  sound 
them  when  learning  the  alphabet.  Indeed, 
were  we  to  do  so  in  one  tenth  part  of  the  in- 
stances, we  should  be  understood  by  nobody. 
What  analogy  can  be  pointed  out  between 
the  rough  breathing  of  the  letter  h,  in  the 
words  when,  where,  how,  etc.,  and  the  "name-. 


(s(>  HORACE 

sound"  (aytch,  aitch,  or  aych,  as  it  is  given  by 
different  spelling-book  compilers)  of  that  letter, 
as  it  is  taught  from  the  alphabet? 

"This  subject  might  be  further  illustrated  by 
reference  to  other  languages, — the  Greek,  for  in- 
stance. Will  the  names  of  the  letters,  kappa, 
omicron,  sigma,  nut,  omicron,  sigma,  make  the  word 
kosmosf  And  yet  these  letters  come  as  near  mak- 
ing that  word,  as  those  given  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Otti- 
well  Wood,  at  a  late  trial  in  Lancashire,  England, 
did  to  the  sound  of  his  own  name.  On  Mr.  Wood's 
giving  his  name  to  the  court,  the  judge  said, 
'Pray,  Mr.  Wood,  how  do  you  spell  your  name?' 
to  which  the  witness  replied; — *O  double  T,  I 
double  U,  E  double  L,  double  U,  double  O,  D.'  In 
the  anecdote  it  is  added,  that  the  learned  judge  at 
first  laid  down  his  pen  in  astonishment;  and  then, 
after  making  two  or  three  unsuccessful  attempts, 
declared  he  was  unable  to  record  it." 

To  this  the  Masters  made  extended  reply  in 
their  "Remarks"  from  which  the  following  state- 
ment is  selected : — 

"\Yheii  we  speak  of  words,  we  may  mean  either 
the  audible,  or  the  written  signs  of  our  ideas.  The 
term  word  is,  therefore,  ambiguous,  unless  it  be  so 
qualified  as  to  have  a  specific  reference.  In 
speaking  of  familiar  words,  nothing  can  be  meant 
except  that  the  child  can  utter  them;  he  knows 
them  only  as  audible  signs.  To  say  that  printed 
words  are  familiar  to  a  child's  tongue,  can  have 
no  other  meaning  than  that  he  is  accustomed  to 
the  taste  of  ink;  to  say  that  such  words  are  famil- 
iar to  his  car,  is  to  attribute  to  that  ink,  a  tongue ; 
and  to  say  that  they  are  familiar  to  the  mind,  is  to 
suppose  the  child  already  able  to  read.  Now,  as 
reading  aloud  is  nothing  less  than  translating 
written  into  audible  signs,  a  knowledge  of  the  latter, 
whatever  may  be  the  system  of  teaching,  is  pre- 
supposed to  exist,  and  is  about  as  necessary  to  the 


>ITY 


THE    EDUCATOR.  87 

• 

one  learning  to  read,  as  would  be  a  knowledge  of 
the  English  language  to  one  who  would  translate 
Greek  into  English. 

"To  illustrate.  Take  the  printed  word  mother; 
when  pronounced,  it  is  familiar  'to  the  ear,  the 
tongue,  and  the  mind.'  Does  this  familiarity  aid 
the  child  in  the  least,  in  comprehending  the 
printed  picture?  Can  he,  from  his  acquaintance 
with  the  audible  sign,  utter  that  sign  by  looking 
upon  the  six  unknown  letters  which  spell  it? 

"The  truth  is,  in  all  that  belongs,  appropriately, 
to  the  question  under  consideration,  the  word  is 
unknown;  unknown  as  a  whole,  unknown  in  all  its 
parts,  and  unknown  as  to  the  mode  of  combining 
those  parts.  The  question,  when  restricted  to  its 
appropriate  limits,  is  simply  this;  'What  is  the 
best  method  of  .teaching  a  child  to  comprehend 
printed  words?' ': 

"Is  the  rose  any  the  less  agreeable  to  the  mind 

of  the  child,  or,  is  the  word  rose,  when  pronounced, 

^  any  the  less  familiar  to  his  organs  of  speech  or  to 

his  ear,  because  its  printed  sign  is  learned  by  com- 

V  bining  the  letters  r-o-s-e?     Or  does  the  mere  act  of 

telling  the  child  to  say  rose,  while  pointing  to  the 

picture,  formed  of  f o\ir  unknown  letters,  in  any 

way  enhance  its  agreeableness? 

"The  question,  then,  is  not  whether  a  child  shall 
be  'introduced  to  a  stranger  through  the  medium 
of  old  acquaintances,'  for,  in  fact,  by  the  new 
system,  this  introduction  is  made  through  the 
medium  of  the  teacher's  voice. 

"The  true  question  at  issue  is,  whether  the  child 
shall  be  furnished  with  an  attendant  to  announce 
the  name  of  the  stranger,  or  whether  he  6hall  be 
furnished  with  letters  of  introduction  by  which,  un- 
attended, he  may  make  the  acquaintance,  not  of 
some  seven  hundred  strangers  merely,  but  of  the 
whole  seventy  thousand  unknown  members  of  our 
populous  vocabulary." 


88  HORACE    MA\\. 

"When  the  secretary,  in  speaking  of  a  child 
after  the  first  year  of  his  life,  says  that,  then,  'the 
wonderful  faculty  of  language  begins  to  develop 
itself/  he  undoubtedly  refers  to  spoken  language. 
And  well  may  that  be  called  a  wonderful  faculty 
by  which,  through  the  agency  of  the  vocal  organs, 
we  can  so  modify  mere  sounds,  as  to  send  them 
forth  freighted  with  thoughts  which  may  cause 
the  hearts  of  others  to  thrill  with  ecstatic  delight, 
or  throb  with  unutterable  anguish.  And  no 
wonder  that  there  should  have  existed,  early  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  a  desire  to  enchain  and 
represent  to  the  eye  these  evanescent  messengers 
of  thought.  Hence  the  early  and  rude  attempts 
at  writing,  by  means  of  pictures  and  symbols. 
But  these,  unfortunately,  were  representatives  of 
the  message,  not  the  messenger;  of  the  idea,  not  the 
sound  which  conveys  it.  At  length  arose  that 
wonderful  invention,  the  art  of  representing  to  the 
eye,  by  means  of  letters,  the  component  parts  of  a 
spoken  word,  so  that  now,  not  merely  the  errand. 
but  the  bearer  stands  pictured  before  us.  Tin- 
grand  and  distinctive  feature  of  this  invention  is, 
that  it  establishes  a  connection  between  the 
written  and  the  audible  signs  of  our  ideas.  It 
throws,  as  it  were,  a  bridge  across  the  otherwise 
impassable  gulf  which  must  ever  have  separated 
the  one  from  the  other.  The  hieroglyphics  and 
symbols  of  the  ancients  performed  but  one  func- 
tion. To  those  who,  by  a  purely  arbitrary  asso- 
ciation, were  able  to  pass  from  the  sign  to  the 
thing  signified,  they  were  representatives  of 
ideas — and  ideas  merely;  hence  they  are  called 
ideographic  characters,  and  that  mode  of  writing 
has  been  denominated  the  symbolic,  and  is  exem- 
plified in  the  Chinese  language." 

"The  new  system  of  teaching  reading  abandons 
entirely  the  distinctive  feature  of  the  phonetic 
mode  of  writing,  and  our  words  are  treated  a» 


THE    EDUCATOR.  89 

though  they  were  capable  of  performing  but  one 
function,  that  of  representing  ideas.  The  lan- 
guage, although  written  with  alphabetic  char- 
acters, becomes,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a 
symbolic  language.  Now  we  say,  as  ours  is 
designedly  a  phonetic  language,  no  system  of 
teaching  ought  to  meet  with  public  favor,  that 
strips  it  of  its  principal  power.  And  we  confess 
ourselves  not  a  little  surprised  that  the  secretary, 
who  cherishes  such  correct  views  of  the  inferiority 
of  the  Chinese  language,  should  urge  us  to  con- 
vert ours  into  Chinese." 

"As  our  language  was  written  with  alphabetic- 
characters,  our  words  are  too  long  and  cumbrous 
for  becoming  mere  symbols.  A  single  character 
would  be  vastly  superior  to  our  trisyllables  and 
polysyllables.  If  the  new  system  prevails,  we  may 
soon  expect  a  demand  for  reform  in  this  respect. 
As  it  now  is,  the  child  must  meet  writh  all  the 
difficulties  that  necessarily  accompany  the  ac- 
quisition of  the  Chinese  language,  and  these 
greatly  increased  by  the  forms  ,of  our  words. 

"The  defenders  of  the  new  system  seem  to  lose 
sight  of  the  nature  and  design  of  the  alphabetic 
mode  of  writing,  as  an  invention.  To  understand 
an  invention,  we  must  first  know7  the  law  of  nature 
which  gave  rise  to  it,  and  then  the  several  parts 
of  the  invented  system,  as  well  as  the  adaptation 
of  these  parts,  when  combined,  to  accomplish 
some  useful  purpose.  Thus,  to  explain  the  steam- 
engine,  the  chemical  law  by  which  water  is  con- 
verted into  steam  must  first  be  understood,  and  in 
connection  with  it,  that  of  elasticity,  common  to 
all  aeriforln  bodies.  Then  follows — wThat  consti- 
tutes the  main  point  in  this  illustration — the  ex- 
planation of  the  several  parts  of  the  machine,  with 
the  modes  of  combining  them,  so  as  to  gain  that 
immense  power,  which  is  found  so  valuable  in  the 
arts.  Take  another  illustration,  more  nearly 


<JO  HORACE     .l/.LY.Y. 

allied  to  the  subject  under  consideration.  It  was 
discovered  a  few  years  since,  that  a  piece  of  iron 
exposed,  under  given  circumstances,  to  a  galvanic- 
current,  would  become  a  powerful  magnet,  and 
that  it  would  cease  to  be  such,  the  instant  the 
current  was  intercepted.  Little  was  it  then 
thought,  that  this  simple  discovery  would  give 
rise  to  an  invention  by  which  the  winged  light- 
ning, fit  messenger  of  thought,  could  be  employed 
to  enable  the  inhabitants  of  Maine  to  converse 
with  their  otherwise  distant  neighbors  in  Louis- 
iana, with  almost  as  much  ease,  as  though  the 
parties  were  seated  in  the  same  parlor. 

"Now,  no  one  will  pretend,  that  to  make  use  of 
the  steam-engime  smocessfully,  all  that  is  neces- 
sary is  to  gain  an  idea  of  it,  as  a  whole.  The 
several  parts,  with  their  various  relations  and 
combinations,  must  be  explained.  Equally  neces- 
sary is  it,  in  managing  the  magnetic  telegraph,  for 
the  operator  to  be  familiar  with  the  laws  of  elec- 
tricity, and  the  adaptation  of  the  several  parts  of 
the  machine,  to  accomplish,  by  means  of  that 
agent,  the  object  proposed.  But  who  would 
think  of  interpreting  the  results  of  its  operation, 
the  dots,  the  lines,  the  spaces,  by  looking  upon 
them  as  constituting  a  single  picture? 

"To  apply  these  illustrations.  It  was  discov- 
ered, ages  ago,  that  Nature  had  endowed  the 
organs  of  speech  with  the  power  of  uttering  a 
limited  number  of  simple  sounds.  From  this  dis 
covery  originated  the  invention  of  letters  to  repre- 
sent these  elementary  sounds.  Letters  constitute 
the  machinery  of  the  invention.  They  are  the  tools 
by  which  the  art  of  reading  is  to  be  acquired ;  and 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  letters  bears  the  same 
relation  to  reading,  as  does  the  thorough  acquaint- 
ance with  the  parts  of  a  steam-engine,  or  of  the 
magnetic  telegraph  to  a  skilful  use  of  these  instru- 
ments. The  new  system  proposes  to  abandon,  for 


THE    EDUCATOR.  <J1 

a  time  at  least,  all  that  is  peculiar  to  this  inven- 
tion; all  that  distinguishes  it  from  the  rude  and 
unphilosophical  systems  of  symbolic  writing, 
which,  centuries  ago,  gave  place  to  it,  throughout 
every  portion  of  the  civilized  world.  Now,  since 
such  an  estimate  was  placed  upon  this  invention  by 
the  ancients,  as  to  secure  its  adoption  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  other  methods  of  writing;  and  since  a 
trial  of  many  centuries  has  served  only  to  confirm 
mankind  in  the  belief  of  its  superiority  over  every 
other  system;  we  can  but  protest  against  the 
adoption  of  a  mode  of  teaching,  that  subjects  the 
child  to  such  inconvenience  and  loss." 

"The  word  letter,  as  applied  to  the  alphabet,  is 
ambiguous,  unless  accompanied  by  some  term,  or 
explanatory  phrase,  to  show  what  is  intended. 
In  referring  to  one  of  the  elementary  sounds 
which  enters  into  the  formation  of  a  spoken  word, 
we  call  that  sound  a  letter;  so,  in  speaking  of  the 
conventional  sign,  which  represents  that  sound  to 
the  eye,  as  the  character  h,  seen  in  a  printed  word, 
that  sign  we  call  a  letter;  both  the  sound  and  the 
sign,  take  the  name  aitch,  for  example;  this  name,  in 
turn,  is  called  a  letter.  Now,  to  prevent  confu- 
sion, these  three  things,  the  power,  the  character, 
and  the  name,  should  be  kept  entirely  distinct 
from  each  other.  In  a  spoken  word,  elementary 
sounds  are  combined';  in  a  written  word,  elemen- 
tary characters;  in  neither  written  nor  spoken 
words,  are  the  names  of  letters  joined,  except  in 
those  instances,  wrhere  the  name  and  power  are 
the  same,  as  in  the  case  of  the  long  sounds  of  the 
vowels." 

"We  never  supposed,  nor  do  we  know  of  a  single 
advocate  of  the  old  system,  who  ever  supposed, 
that  the  names  of  letters  entered  into  the  forma- 
tion of  words;  as,  h-a-t,  into  aitchaitee;  '1-e-g,'  into 
'elegy/ 

"Names  were  not  given  to  letters  for  such  a  pur- 


92  HORACE     .l/.l.YA. 

pose.  They  were  assigned  to  them,  for  the  same 
reason  that  names  are  given  to  other  objects,  to 
aid  us  in  referring  to  the  objects  themselves.  One 
would  scarcely  expect  to  convince  even  a  child, 
that  there  was  neither  pastry,  fruit,  cinnamon, 
nor  sugar,  in  the  pie  he  was  eating,  by  telling  him 
that  pies  are  never  made  of  such  names  as  pastry, 
cinnamon,  etc."  } 

"To  neglect  the  names  of  letters  is  to  destroy* 
at  once,  one  of  the  most  important  exercises  of  the 
primary  school;  that  is,  oral  spelling.  That  let- 
ters must  have  names  to  aid  us  in  referring  to 
them,  no  one  will  deny." 

"If  letters  must  have  names,  why  should  the 
child  be  kept  in  ignorance  of  them?  One  of  the 
first  inquiries  of  a  child,  on  seeing  a  new  object  is, 
•What  is  it?'  'What  do  you  call  it?'  or,  in  other 
words,  'What  is  its  name?'  Shall  such  inquiries 
be  silenced,  when  made  respecting  the  alphabet?" 

"Mr.  Mann  says:  'If  b,  is  be,  then  be  is  bee,  the 
name  of  an  insect;  and  if  /  is  el,  then  el  is  eel,  the 
name  of  a  fish;'  that  is  to  say,  if  the  object  named, 
is  the  same  as  the  name  itself,  then  that  name  be- 
comes the  name  of  an  insect,  or  of  a  fish.  Sur- 
prising! 

"All  printed  names  of  objects  are  formed  from 
printer's  ink.  Bee  is  the  printed  name  of  an 
object;  and  since  the  object  itself  is  the  same  as 
its  name,  it  follows  that  this  insect  is  only 
printer's  ink.  It  is,  therefore,  harmless,  unless  it 
is  that  remarkable  bee  that  has  three  stings;  for 
we  are  told  that — 

"  'No  bee  has  two  stings;'  and  that,  'one  bee  has 
one  more  sting  than  no  bee  (and  perhaps,  this  one) 
has  three  stings. 

"As  for  the  ccl,  fit  emblem  of  the  logic  that 
<-a  light  it,  we  will  leave  it  to  hands  best  able  to 
retain  it." 

"Since  the  child  cannot  'appreciate  the  remote 


THE    EDUCATOlt.  93 

benefits'  of  learning  the  alphabet,  must  his  caprice 
govern  those  who  can,  and  determine  them  to 
abandon,  even  for  a  time,  what  the}'  know  is  ali- 
important  in  teaching  him  to  read?  A  child  is 
sick,  and  cannot  appreciate  the  remote,  or  imme- 
diate benefits  of  taking  disagreeable  medicine. 
Will  a  judicious  parent,  who  is  fully  sensible  of 
the  child's  danger,  regard,  for  one  moment,  his 
wishes,  to  save  him  from  a  little  temporary  dis- 
quietude? A  child  has  no  fondness  for  the  dry 
and  uninteresting  tables  of  arithmetic.  Shall  he, 
therefore,  be  gratified  in  his  desire  to  hasten  on 
to  the  solution  of  questions,  before  acquiring  such 
indispensable  pre-requisites?  We  have  been 
accustomed  to  suppose  that  the  responsibilities 
of  the  teacher's  profession,  consist,  mainly,  in  his 
being  required  to  fashion  the  manners  and  tastes 
of  his  pupils,  to  promote  habits  of  thinking  and 
patient  toil,  and  to  give  direction  to  their  desires 
and  aspirations,  rather  than  to  minister  to  the 
gratification  of  their  passion  for  pleasure." 

uTo  gratify  the  child,  should  not  be  the  teacher's 
aim,  but  rather  to  lay  a  permanent  foundation,  on 
which  to  rear  a  noble  and  well-proportioned  super- 
structure. If,  while  doing  this,  the  teacher  is  suc- 
cessful in  rendering  mental  exertion  agreeable, 
and  in  leading  the  child  from  one  conquest  to 
another,  till  achievement  itself  affords  delight,  it  is  ^ 
well;  such  pleasure  stimulates  to  greater  exertion. 
But  if,  to  cultivate  pleasure-seeking  is  his  aim,  he 
had  better,  at  once,  abandon  his  profession,  and 
obtain  an  employment  in  which  he  will  not  en- 
danger the  welfare,  both  of  individuals  and 
society,  by  sending  forth  a  sickly  race,  palsied  in 
every  limb,  through  idleness,  a  vain  attempt 
to  gratify  a  morbid  thirst  for  pleasure. 

uThe  new  system  proposes  to  afford  the  child 
pleasure  in  the  exercise  of  reading  words;  yet,  in- 
stead of  requiring  him  to  exert,  in  the  least,  his 


1)4  HORACE     J/.LV.V. 

mental  faculties,  in  combining  the  elementary 
parts  of  these  words,  the  teacher  gives  merely  the 
result  of  his  own  mental  processes,  and  exacts 
nothing  from  the  child,  but  a  passive  reception  of 
the  sound,  which  is  to  be  associated  arbitrarily, 
with  the  visible  picture,  pointed  out  to  him.v 

"To  this  method  of  teaching  we  are  opposed,  for 
.the  following  reasons: 

1st. — "Teaching  whole  words  according  to  this 
plan,  to  any  extent  whatever,  gives  the  child  no 
facility  for  learning  new  ones.  Every  word  must 
be  taken  upon  authority,  until  the.  alphabet  is 
learned. 

2d. — "Since  the  alphabet  must,  at  some  period, 
be  acquired,  with  all  its  imperfections,  it  is  but  a 
poor  relief,  to  compel  the  child,  at  first,  to  asso- 
ciate seven  hundred  different,  arbitrary  forms 
with  the  ideas  which  they  represent,  and  then  to 
learn  the  alphabet  itself." 

3d. — "Another  objection  to  converting  our 
language  into  Chinese,  arises  from  the  change 
which  must  inevitably  take  pla.ce  in  the  modes  of 
associating  the  printed  word  with  the  idea  which 
it  represents,  when  the  child  is  taught  to  regard 
words  as  composed  of  elements.  Children,  at 
first,  learn  to  recognize  the  word,  by  the  new 
method,  as  a  single  picture,  not  as  composed  of 
parts;  and  for  aught  we  know,  they  begin  in  the 
middle  of  it  and  examine  each  way.  It  is  not 
probable  that  they  proceed  invariably  from  left 
to  right,  as  in  the  old  mode.  However  that  may 
be,  an  entire  change  must  take  place  when  they 
begin  to  learn  words,  as  composed  of  letters. 
The  attention,  then,  is  directed  to  the  parts  of 
which  words  are  composed.  While  the  eye  is 
employed  in  combining  the  visible  characters,  the 
mind  unites  the  powers  which  they  represent,  and 
the  organs  of  speech  are  prompt  to  execute  what 
the  eye  and  the  mind  have  simultaneously  pre- 


THE    EDUCATOR.  95 

pared  for  them.  The  mode  of  association  in  a 
symbolic  language,  if  we  mistake  not,  is  this:  The 
single  picture  is  -associated  arbitrarily,  yet 
directly,  with  the  idea;  the  idea  is  then  associated 
with  its  audible  sign;  this  sign,  being  familiar  to 
the  child,  is  readily  uttered.  In  a  phonetic  lan- 
guage, it  is  different.  The  attention  being 
directed  to  the  letters  and  their  powers,  the  child 
is  conducted  immediately  to  the  audible  sign;  this 
\vhen  uttered,  or  thought  of,  suggests  the  idea. 
Whether  or  not  these  are  the  correct  views,  is 
immaterial  to  the  argument.  All  that  is  claimed 
is,  that  a  change  takes  place  in  the  modes  of  asso- 
ciation, as  soon  as  the  child  begins  to  combine 
letters  into  words.  It  is  of  this  change  we  com- 
plain. All  will  acknowledge  the  importance  of 
forming  in  the  child,  correct  habits  of  association, 
such  as  will  not  need  revolutionizing  at  a  subse- 
quent period  in  life." 

4th. — "The  new  system  fails  to  accomplish  the 
object  which  it  proposes.  The  main  design  of 
this  mode  of  teaching  seems  to  be,  to  escape  the 
ambiguity  arising  from  the  variety  of  sounds 
which  attach  to  some  of  the  letters,  as  well  as 
from  the  variety  of  forms  by  which  the  same 
sounds  may  be  represented. 

"The  defenders  of  this  system  seem  to  forget, 
since  these  anomalies  are  elementary,  that  they 
must  be  carried  into  the  formation  of  words. 
Thus,  we  can  represent  a  single  elementary  sound, 
lirst  by  a,  then  by  ai,  and  again,  by  ei;  hence,  we 
can  form  three  different  words;  as  vane,  vain,  vein. 
In  a  similar  manner  we  have,  rain,  reign,  rein; 
Bright,  write,  right,  rite;  and  hundreds  of  others. 
It  will  be  seen  at  once,  that  it  must  be  as  difficult 
for  a  child  to  attach  the  same  sound  to  four  differ- 
ent pictures  called  words,  as  to  four  different  pic- 
tures called  letters.  Hence,  it  is  plain,  that  we 
have  'harlequins'  among  words;  as  well  as  among 


96  HORACE 

letters.  The  only  difference  is,  that  the  former  are 
more  numerous,  yet  the  legitimate  offspring  of  the 
latter.  We  have  'masqueraders,'  too,  among 
words.  Let  the  sound  represented  by  the  four 
letters,  r-i-t-e,  fall  upon  the  child's  ear,  and  he  may 
think,  either,  of  a  ceremony,  of  making  letters 
with  a  pen,  of  justice,  or  of  a  workman.  Again, 
let  either  the  printed  or  spoken  word  pound,  for 
example,  be  given;  and  he  may  think  of  an  en- 
closure for  stray  cattle,  of  striking  a  blowr,  of  cer- 
tain weights,  as  avoirdupois,  apothecaries',  or 
Troy  weight,  and  also,  of  a  denomination  of 
money." 

5th. — "It  introduces  confusion  into  the  different 
grades  of  schools. 

"The  elements  must  be  taught  somewhere.  If 
neglected  in  the  primary  schools,  they  must  be 
taught  in  the  grammar  schools.  And  thus  the 
order  of  things  is  reversed,  and  disarrangement 
introduced  into  the  whole  school  system.  The 
teacher  who  is  employed,  and  paid,  for  instructing 
in  the  higher  branches,  is  compelled  to  devote 
time  and  attention  to  the  studies  appropriately 
belonging  to  the  schools  of  a  lower  grade." 

"Two  children,  in  like  circumstances,  in  every 
respect,  commence  learning  to  read;  the  first 
learns  some  seven  hundred  different  words,  as  he 
would  so  many  different  letters;  having  acquired 
no  more  ability  to  learn  the  seven  hundred  and 
first,  than  he  had  at  the  beginning;  afterwards  he 
learns  the  twTenty-six  letters  of  the  alphabet,  in- 
cluding all  the  'harlequins'  and  'masqueraders/ 
and  finally  the  art  of  combining  the  letters  into 
words.  The  other  learns  first,  the  letters;  then, 
the  art  of  combining  them;  and  finally  makes  use 
of  this  knowledge,  to  acquire  his  seven  hundred 
words.  Now  by  what  rule  of  arithmetic,  or  of 
common  sense,  it  is  ascertained  that  the  former 
will  advance  more  rapidly  than  the  latter,  is  to  us 
entirelv  unknown." 


THE     KDUCATOlt.  97 

"The  main  question  at  issue,  we  are  constrained 
to  answer  in  the  negative.  The  arguments  ab- 
duced  in  its  support  are,  as  we  believe,  incon- 
clusive. The  plausibility  of  some  arises  from 
considerations  wholly  irrelevant ;  others  are  falla- 
cious; and  others  still,  are  based  upon  false 
premises. 

"On  the  contrary,  the  reasons  brought  against 
the  change,  and  in  favor  of  the  prevailing  system. 
are  of  paramount  importance.  Therefore,  as  con- 
scientious and  faithful  servants  in  the  cause  of 
education,  we  feel  bound  to  adhere  to  the  path  of 
duty,  rather  than  yield  to  the  opinions  even  of 
those  who  are  high  in  authority." 

The  "Reply"  of  Mr.  Mann  deals  with  the  ques- 
tion in  this  way: — 

"There  are  several  reasons  why  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt a  lengthened  reply  to  this  part  of  the  'Re- 
marks.' The  first  is,  that,  from  beginning  to  end, 
it  is  an  arrant  misrepresentation  of  the  system  it 
professes  to  impugn.  I  have  never  advocated,  or 
known,  or  heard  of,  nor  have  I  met  any  person 
who  has  ever  advocated,  or  known,  or  heard  of, 
any  such  mode  of  teaching  the  English  language 
to  children,  as  the  'Remarks'  assail." 

"It  would  be  useless  to  consider,  in  detail,  those 
arguments  which  are  brought  to  overthrow  a  sys- 
tem which  nobody  upholds.  Besides,  the  plain, 
common-sense  views  which  belong  to  this  subject, 
are  turned  into  metaphysics,  by  the  'Remarks,' 
and  treated  with  division  and  subdivision,  that 
bewilder  instead  of  elucidating.  The  subject  is 
ground  dowTn,  and  pulverized  into  impalpability, 
—beyond  microscopic  vision.  Had  it  been  the  un- 
aided production  of  a  single  mind,  the  subtlety 
and  evanescence  of  its  refinements  might  have 
been  less; — now,  I  know  not  how  otherwise  to 
describe  it  than  as  the  doctrine  of  metaphysics 
applied  to  the  almost  endless  anomalies  of  the 


<)S  HORACE     MANN, 

alphabet.  An  attempt  to  individualize  the 
atomicul  parts  of  this  section,  and  to  give  an 
answer  to  each,  would  be  like  attempting  to  beat 
back  a  league-square  of  sea-fog,  by  hitting  each 
particle  with  the  sharpened  end  of  a  rod.  I  shall 
content  myself,  therefore,  with  endeavoring  to 
find  some  nuclei  rarified  into  less  metaphysical 
tenuity  than  the  general  mass,  and  striking  at 
them." 

"l>y  the  'old  method/  the  names  of  the  letters, — 
the  A,  B,  C,  as  they  have  been  immemorially 
called, — were  first  taught.  After  these  letters, 
came  tables  of  ab  and  eb,  of  bla  and  ble,  of  sk;i. 
ske,  of  bam,  flam,  etc.,  etc.,  an  almost  endless  cata- 
logue, and  doleful  as  endless." 

"By  the  kold  system/  when  the  child  could 
master  the  alphabet  at  sight,  and  could  read  these 
names  of  nothing,  by  spelling  them,  he  was  put  to 
the  reading  of  short  sentences.  Then,  and  not  till 
then,  was  any  order  or  beauty  evolved  to  his 
vision,  out  of  night  and  chaos.  From  inquiries 
made,  I  know  not  of  how  many  teachers,  I  learn 
that  it  has  taken  children/on  an  average,  at  least l 
six  months  to  master  the  alphabet,  on  this  plan, 
even  when  they  went  to  school  constantly.  In 
country  districts,  where  there  are  short  schools 
and  long  vacations,  it  has  generally  required  a 
year,  and  often  eighteen  months,  to  teach  a  child 
the  twenty-six  letters  of  the  alphabet;  when  the 
same  child  wrould  have  learned  the  names  of 
twenty-six  playmates,  or  of  twenty-six  interesting 
objects  of  any  kind,  in  one  or  two  days.  And  the 
reason  is  obvious.  In  learning  the  meaningless  ; 
letters  of  the  alphabet,  there  was  nothing  to  at- 
tract his  attention,  to  excite  his  curiosity,  to  de- 
light his  mind,  or  to  reward  his  efforts.  The  life,, 
the  zest,  the  eagerness  with  which  all  children,  ex-; 
cept  natural-born  idiots,  seek  for  real  objects,  ask; 
their  names,  or  catch  them  without  asking,  never 


THE    EDUCATOR.  99 

enlivened  this  process.  The  times  of  the  lessons 
were  seasons  of  suspended  animation.  The  child 
was  taught  not  to  think.  His  eyes  and  mind  were 
directed  to  objects  as  little  interesting  as  so  many 
grains  of  sand.  For  the  time  being,  he  was 
banished  from  this  world  into  the  realms  of 
vacuity.  By  the  letters  and  abs,  no  glimmer  of  an 
idea  was  excited  in  the  child's  mind,  and  when  he 
was  put  into  words  and  short  sentences,  he  found, 
as  the  general  rule,  that  the  letters  had  all 
changed  their  names,  without  any  act  of  the 
Legislature.  Were  the  common  objects  of  na 
ture  or  of  art, — animals,  trees,  flowers,  fruits, 
articles  of  furniture  and  of  dress,  implements  of 
trade,  etc.,  etc.,  learned  as  slowly  as  this,  an  indi- 
vidual would  hardly  be  able  to  name  the  objects 
immediately  around  him  during  the  first  century 
of  his  existence;  and  antediluvian  longevity  wrould 
find  him  inquiring  the  names  of  things  now 
familiar  to  a  child.  But  all  who  have  arrived  at 
middle  life,  and  been  educated  in  this  community, 
know  bitterly  what  the  'old  method'  means. 

"By  the  'new  method,'  a  book  is  used  which  con- 
tains, short,  familiar  words,  which  are  the  names 
of  pleasant  objects  or  qualities,  or  suggest  the 
idea  of  agreeable  actions.  A  simple  story  is  told, 
or  some  inquiry  is  made,  in  which  a  particular 
word  is  used,  and  when  the  child's  attention  is 
gained  and  his  interest  excited,  the  word  is  shown 
to  him,  as  a  whole.  He  is  made  to  speak  it,  and  is 
told  that  the  written  or  printed  object  means 
what  we  mean  when  we  speak  the  word ;  and  that 
if  he  will  learn  words,  he  can  read  such  stories  in 
books  as  he  has  heard,  or  speak  to  people  a  hun- 
dred miles  distant  from  him,  or  that  he  can  do 
some  other  of  the  hundred  wonderful  things 
which  belong  to  reading,  and  which  even  a  child 
can  be  made  to  understand.  Words  are  shown, 
which  excite  pleasant  images  when  spoken,  and 


100  HORACE    J/JLV.Y. 

after  a  little  while,  if  the  instruction  is  judiciously 
managed,  the  child  comes  to  look  upon  a  book  as 
a  magic  casket,  full  of  varied  and  beautiful  treas- 
ures, which  he  longs  to  see.  Pleasant  associa- 
tions with  the  book,  the  school,  and  the  teacher, 
are  created.  The  idea  that  every  word  has  a  sig- 
nification is  kept  perpetually  before  his  niind, 
until  he  looks  habitually  for  a  meaning  in  printed 
words,  as  much  as  he  does  in  those  spoken  ones, 
which  are  addressed  to  him.  His  mind  is  kept  in 
an  active,  thinking  state.  The  time  never  is, 
when  he  looks  at  the  words  in  a  book  without 
going  out,  in  imagination,  to  things,  actions,  or 
relations,  beyond  the  book.  He  is  not  stultified 
as  he  is  when  compelled  to  look  at  letters  and 
particles,  for  a  year,  which  are  almost  nothing  in 
themselves  and  suggest  nothing  beyond  them 
selves.  After  a  number  of  words  have  been 
taught  in  this  way, — more  or  less,  according  to 
the  capacities  of  the  child,  but  ordinarily,  I  should 
say,  less  than  a  hundred, — some  of  the  letters  are 
pointed  out.  In  subsequent  lessons  the  attention 
is  turned  more  and  more  to  the  letters,  until  all 
are  learned." 

There  is  no  occasion  to  quote  from  the  forty 
pages  devoted  to  this  subject  in  the  "Rejoinder  of 
the  Masters,''  nor  from  the  almost  equal  space 
given  to  it  in  the  "Answer"  of  Mr.  Mann.  It  now 
becomes  little  more  than  a  personal  quarrel  be- 
tween the  twTo  forces  as  to  which  has  outraged  and 
misrepresented  the  other  most  brutally  or  skill- 
fully, as  you  please,  and  with  that  wre  have  no  con 
cern.  The  three  presentations  here  made  show 
the  relative  positions  of  the  contestants.  In  this 
phase  of  the  discussion,  Mr.  Mann  is  at  his  best 
and  the  masters  are  at  their  worst  and  it  is  due 
Mr.  Mann,  in  a  study  of  his  life,  that  the  section 
chosen  should  be  that  in  which  he  appears  to 
advantage.  It  has  been  said  with  much  plainness 


THE    EDUCATOR.  101 

in  these  pages  that  he  was  not  creditably  repre- 
sented in  the  personal  issues  raised;  it  is  only  tail- 
that  the  professional  side  be  presented,  for  in  that 
lie  had  every  advantage. 

Time  has  placed  him  upon  the  educational 
throne.  In  the  grounds  in  front  of  the  State 
House  stand  two  statues — one  of  Daniel  Webster 
«fntl  the  other  of  Horace  Mann,  the  only  person 
in  Massachusetts  whose  antagonism  in  speech  a  ml 
politics  led  to  Mr.  Webster's  thorough  discomfiture. 
Their  differences  are  forgotten,  and  admirers  of 
the  statesman-orator  and  of  the  statesman-edu- 
cator honor  them  equally.  Mr.  Mann's  statue  is 
in  the  most  commanding  spot  in  the  city  of  Boston 
where  his  fame  is  at  its  height  and  the  Boston 
masters  of  half  a  century  have  been  rearing  im- 
mortal monuments  to  the  wisdom  and  devotion 
of  the  greatest  educator  of  his  time.  Nowhere 
are  his  praises  sung  more  spiritedly  in  this 
memorial  year  than  by  the  schools  in  which  chil- 
dren are  ennobled  and  inspired  intellectually  and 
morally  by  the  Boston  masters  and  their  corps  of 
assistants.  As  the  statues  of  Webster  and  Mann 
stand  side  by  side,  placed  there  by  the  same  au- 
thorities, admirers  of  both,  so  the  Boston  schools 
of  to-day  are  monuments  to  Mr.  Mann  and  the 
masters  who  are  alike  respected  for  their  service. 
The  men  of  Massachusetts  in  this  hour  of  her 
commercial,  educational  and  civic  grandeur  are 
the  "next  generation," 

THE    CLIENTS    OF    HORACE    MANN. 


•mi 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 
on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

re  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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